


Long United, Long Divided

by 23Murasaki



Series: Long United, Long Divided [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: (Enough Parenthetical Asides To Make Your Eyes Bleed Too), (and is about as functional as a 22 year old in his situation could be), (except Sidious maybe but he doesn't count), Accidental Villain Acquisition, Adventures in Alignment Ping-Pong, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Space Science, Because Screw Canon Is Why, Canon-Typical Levels of Communication, Dark Side Everything, Darth Maul Lives, Enough Three Kingdoms References To Make Your Eyes Bleed Probably, Force Ghost(s), Force Visions, Fun With Sith Holocrons, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Galactic Republic, Gen, Headcanons Everywhere, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Jedi, Jedi Politics (Star Wars), Many People Need Hugs But Do Not Get Them, Or At Least Flirting With The Dark Side, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Qui-Gon is a Dad, Seduction to the Dark Side, Sith Shenanigans (Star Wars), The Author's Opinions On Space Monks And Space Politics, The Dark Side Isn't Fun For Anyone, The Stupidest Smart People You Ever Did See, adding tags as I go, because star wars is a mess anyway, legends villains by the bucketload, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 49
Words: 115,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22522129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan find a prophesied chosen one and capture a Sith apprentice on Tatooine. This has ramifications for the Jedi as an institution and for the galaxy as a whole, of course, but the value of one man in the fate of all things is that of a single rice grain in a harvest. Dark powers are at work in the galaxy, and chaos waits for none.(Or: The realization that I'm both taller and older than Darth Maul in TPM is really quire jarring and alphamikefoxtrot is a wonderful enabler, so instead of doing any of the many things I should be doing I'm writing prequels-era fic. Oops.)Update 3 January: The fallout from Mortis and the resolution of the Sith holocron plot. Everything goes horribly wrong, because this is Star Wars with a side of Three Kingdoms, what do you expect.This fic is now officially complete! Please check back for a sequel, hopefully starting next week.
Series: Long United, Long Divided [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100678
Comments: 427
Kudos: 491





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alphamikefoxtrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphamikefoxtrot/gifts).



> Hi, yes, I have regrets but not nearly enough to not post this. Also it's a birthday present for alphamikefoxtrot, who is a wonderful human and has listened to me whine a lot about worldbuilding. I... sure do hope the rest of you like it too?

There are always two, when there are Siths—a master and an apprentice. (Practically speaking, not always—sometimes there are masters without apprentices, sometimes there are multiple claimants to any title, but the rules indicate there should be two.) So which is the cloaked creature dancing deadly rings around him and Obi-Wan? Well-trained, certainly, and vicious, but Qui-Gon has seen many a Padawan quicker with a saber than with sense. As he manages to knock the Sith back, off balance, he feels the full weight of the hate and fury lurking behind the creature’s bloodshot yellow eyes—and it’s, he thinks, the sort of fury born of pain, the same thing he’d seen in the slavers’ market in the outpost, the same thing that clings to Anakin like the smell of smoke lingers long after a fire. Apprentice, then, he guesses, and whispers it aloud to test the theory. The Sith snarls, low and deep (like a cornered animal even though he has the upper hand and the desert at his back). 

“That won’t save you, _Master_ ,” he replies, dragging the last word out like an oath. It’s meant to sound threatening, but what it does is sound childish, which is an odd word to apply to someone built like a tank and making good use of a double-bladed red lightsaber. (The more he mulls it the more accurate it seems, though. If this is an apprentice, recently acquired as part of a master’s rise to power, then their enemy could well be Obi-Wan’s age or younger. And Obi-Wan, for all his skill, is a child even at 24.)

“No,” Qui-Gon admits evenly. Calm, he thinks, project calm. (Like he’s at the Temple again, he thinks, breathe deeply and smile steadily and let Master Dooku’s dark mood crash and fade like waves against the beach. Only, of course, the Sith apprentice isn’t Master Dooku, he doesn’t fade to a practiced calm, but for a moment his anger gives way to confusion before he hears the engine’s roar behind him.) “That will, though.” 

The Sith lunges just then, but he’s off-balance and startled, Obi-Wan shouts something—he makes a split-second call, then. (It’s not one the Jedi Council would look upon with approval, but Qui-Gon doesn’t crave the approval of high towers and cold masks. The approval he’d craved as a youngling had been the sort that came with Master Dooku’s crooked grin and rare dip of the old man’s Serenni accent, and that had become a distant memory as Qui-Gon had grown older and Dooku had grown more sour.) 

He slams his knee into the Sith’s gut (there’s no force in the galaxy that makes that not hurt, he’s learned), grabs his arm and twists it before ordering Obi-Wan to grab the double-bladed saber. To his credit, Obi-Wan moves like lightning and disarms their opponent, then keeps his mouth shut until after they’re all safely aboard ship and Qui-Gon is sitting on a snarling, struggling Sith apprentice because the little queen is staring at them in confusion.

“Master, what do you mean to do with him?” he asks, but in the pointed tone that absolutely means “Master, what the kriff are you doing, have you gone completely addle-brained, would you please hold off on such behavior until you have completed my training because if you don’t they’ll pawn me off somewhere where apprenticeships go to die and we both know nothing will ever get accomplished that way”. 

“Something,” says Qui-Gon in a way that aims for wise and placid but falls a bit short. 

“Do your worst,” the Sith apprentice snarls (a bit muffled, on account of being face-down on the floor). “Torture me, kill me, I’ve already seen everything your kind can do. And if I am lost, others will come. You have not destroyed us!” (Everything your kind can do? That’s doubtful. More than that, though, it smacks of Force visions. Interesting.)

“It’s impossible to destroy the Dark Side,” says Qui-Gon, even though he probably shouldn’t say such things to his present audience. Obi-Wan looks like he’s eaten something sour, poor lad. (It’s the truth though. Never in all the storied history of the Jedi has the darkness been destroyed. Beaten back, weakened, contained, yes, but never destroyed.) “How about we start with your name?” The Sith apprentice tries to yank him by the robes, to no effect, then gives up and lies there limply. 

“Maul. I am called Darth Maul.” (Obi-Wan frowns even harder, projecting the sentiment of “that’s a verb, not a name” to practically the whole room, which is also a tough stance for someone whose name is an article of clothing on at least three planets.)

They throw the Sith apprentice in a containment cell rather quickly, since no one expects him to remain compliant for long. In classical Naboo fashion, the locks are manual (though ultimately routed through a computer system), and Qui-Gon notes the flicker of surprise on his captive’s face when they audibly click. Nothing here was meant to hold a Jedi or a Sith, he knows, but they have nowhere better to put him. 

“There are alarms,” he tells the Sith placidly. “And I know this shop far better than you do.”  
“I could open it,” is the reply. (There’s more curiosity than anger and more fear than curiosity behind those words. _I could open it, and then what?_ )

“You could,” he agrees. “But you won’t.” (Because, now that he’s stripped of his dark cloak and his lightsaber and the better part of his rage, the Sith apprentice looks quite young, and young apprentices learn quickly to bow their heads and obey their masters. Qui-Gon is likely staking his life on that.)

——————

The little queen corners him later, imperious even in disguise, and folds her arms and stares him down. 

“What did you mean,” she asks, “when you said darkness could never be destroyed?” She asks a lot of things, including to be called Padmé, but she’s the little queen the way Qui-Gon is a Jedi and Obi-Wan is an apprentice and Anakin is—what? A slave? A freedman, a child of a prophecy? He frowns, and the little—the girl Padmé frowns back at him. “What did you mean?”

“I meant what I said,” he answers. “There is always evil, there is always the Dark Side, and all we can do is mitigate its impact and help those who are hurt. You could kill every Sith and Nightwitch in the galaxy and there would still be the Dark Side.” (Long ago, Jedi philosophers wondered if the Dark Side lurked not in some external corruption, not as a virus or a taint, but in the fundamentals of the living mind. Those views fell out of fashion several republics ago, and Qui-Gon has never read them, but if he were to stumble across such writings he would find in them many of his own views. Perhaps he would then wonder, faced with written things, about the fate of his own old master or of the Council itself, but that’s purely a hypothetical scenario.)

“There would always be more of them, then?” the girl Padmé presses. “There’s no victory for you?”

“No defeat either,” he says. “Even in the worst and darkest times, one finds the light.” That half of the philosophy is easier for Padmé to accept, at least, because she is still very young and she believes in the eventual triumph of good and that it may even happen before her eyes, but she still shoots Qui-Gon one last dubious stare before leaving him be. 

(Neither of them, for the moment, is thinking about the ship’s newest residents, and that may be for the best. Anakin wanders down to the containment cells because he’s nine and curious and has never seen a Sith or a Zabrak in his short life and says hello, because he rather thinks it’s nice to be told hello when you’re in a cage. Maul stares at him and waits for whatever trap the child must be bait in. There isn’t one, of course, but he has no grasp of innocent curiosity. 

“I’m Anakin,” the child says. “You told the Jedi you were called Maul?” 

“ _Darth_ Maul,” he corrects automatically. 

“You’re not from Tatooine,” Anakin continues, unphased. “Where do you come from?”

“Nowhere.” It’s not a lie. The Jedi and the Sith are clouded mirrors of each other, and Maul too has been raised to forgo attachments. He has no home in all the galaxy but the Dark Side itself and the fury that has sunk deep into his bones and skin. 

“Oh,” says Anakin. “I was going to ask you what your home’s like. I’ve never been off Tatooine before.” Maul shrugs. 

“Most places have less sand.” 

“Oh.” The child cocks his head and tries to picture such a concept. It’s difficult, so he gives up after a minute and tries a different tack. “Have you ever seen a podrace?”

Obi-Wan finds them half an hour later, Anakin sitting cross-legged on the floor attempting to explain some finer point of flying a tin can backwards through a ravine using an outdated steering system and your own untrained Force abilities and Maul with his knees against his chest, half listening despite himself.)

—————

The next stop is Coruscant, home of the Jedi Temple and the Galactic Senate. Anakin does not run out of questions, comments, or ideas about droids for the duration of the trip, Padmé will not stop pacing, Jarjar is getting progressively more panicked, and thankfully the Sith apprentice—Maul, his name’s Maul—remains quietly in his cell because if he didn’t Qui-Gon would be tempted to turn the ship around and go right back to Tatooine. (No he wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t, he’s a Jedi knight and has faced worse and more aggravating things in his life. The small corner of his mind that’s a person first and a Jedi second and is exhausted by the presence of all these children can stuff it.) 

“Master,” says Obi-Wan in a way that sounds very much not honorific, “What exactly do you plan to do with the Sith once we are on Coruscant?” It’s an annoyingly relevant question. Maul is unlikely to stay politely in his cell if the ship is only occupied by Naboo palace guards, but what can they do—bring a Sith Lord, even unarmed, into the Senate? Surely not. 

“Don’t worry, it shall all work out,” Qui-Gon says, which they both know is code for making it up as they go along. Obi-Wan frowns. 

“For that matter, what will you do with the Gungan?” he adds. 

“Trust me,” he says. He hasn’t gotten them killed yet, after all, though Maul is admittedly more dangerous a stray than he usually picks up.

————

Maul stares balefully back at him through the clear, reinforced walls of the cell. He looks like a wound against the cold white wall, red and black and emanating hate and anger. From a different point of view, he looks like a petulant child. 

“We are arriving on Coruscant shortly,” Qui-Gon says, but it seems the apprentice had used up all his vocabulary within minutes of his capture. “We need to stop at the Senate before we deal with you.” More glaring. “Will you vacate the ship along with us?” The Sith growls.

“Do you need someone else to torture me for you?” he asks. It seems to be only halfway a taunt. 

“I’d prefer it not to get that far,” Qui-Gon answers. (Or doesn’t answer. The Jedi don’t condone torture, of course, which means Jedi knights do not carry out such distasteful acts. Those who do are cheaply bought in places like the galactic capital, and both Qui-Gon and Maul know that.) A different approach may be in order. “Have you ever seen the Senate building?” After a moment’s silence the Sith shakes his head no. 

“...from afar,” he corrects a moment later (a moment where the Sith recedes and only the apprentice remains, which is rather what Qui-Gon wants). 

“It’s a better view up close.” 

So they touch down on the Senate’s rooftop with the Naboo queen’s entire retinue, a Gungan, Anakin, two random droids, and a Sith Lord in manacles that are definitely not meant to restrain Force-users. (Obi-Wan is nearly vibrating with frustration and Maul keeps making little taunting half-motions in his direction, which isn’t making anything look better.)

Valorum and the senator from Naboo, Palpatine, are waiting (with their own retinues of armed guards). In some people, fear leads to the dark side, while in men like Valorum it leads merely to a large investment in various products meant to regrow bitten nails. He fidgets nervously. Beside him, Palpatine is still and silent. (Qui-Gon doesn’t know much about the senator from Naboo, save that he is moderately well-liked and the latest son of some local political dynasty.) As the ship lands, Palpatine’s head turns sharply—from watching the descent to staring through a solid wall directly at… the moment passes, and Palpatine has turned to address his chancellor instead. The bay door opens and they descend. 

Valorum wrings his hands over the queen, over the report of the Trade Federation’s movements, over the potential bad press of a prisoner on the roof, and over the fact that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan won’t stay to discuss anything further. By the time he is through with the hand-wringing Palpatine has ushered his fellow Naboo (and Anakin) down the stairs. Maul stares after them with a hungry sort of curiosity and snarls when Obi-Wan steps on his foot. (But Maul does mumble something about a better view after he’s prodded into a speeder, and that feels like a small victory against the dark somehow.)

The small victory falls flat when Maul makes a break for it right outside the Jedi Temple, tries to grab his lightsaber back from Qui-Gon, and winds up landing a few bare-handed hits (and a few more with a branch) before Obi-Wan manages to knock him out. At least he’s light enough (too light for a fighter, underfed and scrawny) to carry into the Council chamber like a particularly spiky piece of luggage. Qui-Gon sets the unconscious Sith apprentice down on the Council table, hands the lightsaber over to Koth (Mace Windu looks like he’ll have an aneurism if the vein on his forehead pulses any faster) and politely informs the Council that it appears the Sith have returned. 

The ensuing interrogation yields little more than Qui-Gon already knows. Maul knows his master’s title (Sidious) and Obi-Wan manages to coax a location of a stronghold (Mustafar) out of him through a spectacularly circular line of questioning, but neither of these are enough to even approach a positive identification and the Council eventually gives up and demands Maul be imprisoned. 

“He may prove more useful if he is kept on hand,” Qui-Gon demures. Windu looks like he wants to get up and walk out. (All this still goes over better than Anakin does.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, I guess there's an actual audience for this. Have some more Jedi nonsense, including a guest star who should not be surprising at all because he's tagged as a major character for a reason!

Obi-Wan is sulking again. He’s gotten better, over the years, at sulking subtly, but it’s still obvious to Qui-Gon (though he’s not entirely sure what the boy’s sulking about—surely he knows what’s at stake, what Anakin could mean to the whole galaxy, and surely he should be pleased at the prospect of his impending knighthood, and surely and surely so many things still are never sure with Obi-Wan).

“You’re angry.” And apparently the sulking is obvious to more than just Qui-Gon. Their Sith captive is watching Obi-Wan with an odd expression that he quickly tames to a superior smirk. The superiority is rather undercut by the new manacles, which definitely are meant for controlling Force-sensitives, and the face that he’s sitting on his heels in the grass. 

“I’m frustrated,” Obi-Wan corrects. 

“Why?” The Dark Side picks and digs at people until their mental defenses are full holes then corrupts from the inside out. This particular agent of it, though, has all the subtlety of a youngling. (Odd thing for a Sith, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be, if one pardons the pun, _insidious_ , but this one may have two blades on his saber to make up for his mind being a blunt instrument.) 

“Because…” Obi-Wan pauses, searches for a tactful option, falls a bit short. “Because some people are very foolish.” An understandable frustration, one Qui-Gon even shares—albeit with likely a different target. (Obi-Wan is still quite young, and he has faith in traditions and institutions the way one could have faith in one’s parents. It’s a sign that Qui-Gon raised him well, that he believes in such things, but it puts him at odds with his master. Qui-Gon hasn’t believed in institutions for a very long time, on account of seeing so many of them fall and fail, but he does believe in beautiful abstracts like justice and truth and fate, and that prophecy could succeed where institutions fail. Neither of them is right. Maul, who believes nigh blindly in his master and the promised salvation of the Dark Side, is also wrong, though that’s something both Jedi already know.) Suddenly Obi-Wan spots someone over Qui-Gon’s shoulder and jumps to his feet with the air of a man rescued from an incredibly awkward conversation. “Master Dooku! Good afternoon!”

“Obi-Wan,” says Master Dooku with a bland smile, then he fixes Qui-Gon with the sort of glare that sends those less used to it scurrying for shelter. Qui-Gon had his whole apprenticeship to grow immune, however, so he meets his old master’s eyes without a hint of distress. “Qui-Gon. What are you doing.” It is not a question so much as the prelude to a lecture. 

“Collecting strays,” Qui-Gon deadpans, because he knows it will get under his old master’s skin. (It does, but not for the reasons he thinks. He believes Dooku to be practically heartless, the epitome of the High Council’s cool, strategic practicality, wrapped in robes too elegant to wear on the battlefield. He also believes Dooku dislikes him. Funny how one can live half a lifetime with another person and not know them at all: Dooku and Qui-Gon are strange mirrors of each other, desperate idealists clinging to the hope that something, somewhere, will flip a switch and set the galaxy right. Qui-Gon has pinned his hopes on a prophecy and a child currently being fussed over by a kindly crechemaster who thinks dusty, sand-specked clothes from Tatooine simply would not do, regardless of whether or not the boy is to be a Jedi. Dooku, some decades ago, dared pin his hopes on a rebellious apprentice who seemed to bow to no power in the galaxy. Some people, as Obi-Wan noted, are very foolish.) Dooku doesn’t sigh in exasperation, he’s too well-trained for that, but he does exhale a bit more than average. 

“Do you know how much of a risk you are posing to the Temple?” (The risk, to Dooku, is less one bound and seemingly compliant Sith and more the spreading buzz of uncertainty that has accompanied Anakin Skywalker. A child, an ordinary, if Force-sensitive child, would be tended to and set to one of the many duties that do not require knighthood. A chosen one is something quite else, and Dooku has been dreaming of death lately.)

“Less of one than had I let him roam free.” (The risk, to Qui-Gon, is less the spreading doubt and uncertainty that has come in Anakin’s wake and more the slowly dawning implication of what Maul means. A bit of chaos may do the Council some good, it may be what it takes to restore balance to the Force, but the Sith have masters and apprentices and long-laid plans and grips like durasteel. Maul may be little more than a pawn in a long game, but his master is something quite else and Qui-Gon’s dreams have been strange lately.)

“You clearly do not understand—” Dooku begins with his usual gravitas, but it doesn’t really matter what Qui-Gon may or may not understand because between the High Council and the Trade Federation and Maul and now the old man’s apparent dismissal he’s impatient to act—to do anything impactful, really, because at times like this dealing with his fellow Jedi feels a bit like screaming at a wall. 

“No, I do understand,” he says it low and smiling, because Jedi do not let anger consume them. “I understand that the Sith have returned and seek to destroy everything we hold dear, I understand that the Trade Federation and their allies are wreaking havoc and there is nothing the Senate is willing to do to stop them, and you sit here pretending that, what, Jedi ought to duel like Serreni gentlemen from the Old Republic?” It’s an old jab, bitter and childish. Dooku’s fondness for classical styles and archaic saber designs has never been something he had sought to force on others. (Old-fashioned tea ceremonies from his homeworld were another story, but Qui-Gon had never really minded those.)

“And what would you do?” Dooku snaps. “Recite prophecies at the Sith until they fall over from boredom?” (He sounds disparaging, but he believes in the prophecies almost as much as Qui-Gon does. He also knows too well the cost of mistranslation and misinterpretation.)

“Master Dooku—” Obi-Wan interrupts, his own sulking momentarily set aside in the face of a potentially larger problem, and both masters turn sharply towards him. (These are clouded times, and they’d sort of forgotten he was there.) “Please. Is there some way the Senate can be pushed towards a decision?” It’s a blatant appeal to authority, they all know the Senate can’t be pushed to anything, but Dooku has a reputation for dabbling in politics more than a Jedi ought and an old teacher’s tendency to be distracted by his favorite topics. 

“Fools,” Maul scoffs. He does so very quietly, but it’s enough to draw their attention. 

“Oh?” Qui-Gon prompts. The Sith apprentice bares his teeth. 

“I said you were all fools! You have no idea what you’re up against, and you have no idea what’s right beneath your feet, and you have no idea where my master—” And then he flinches, cuts himself off quickly, and retreats to sit with his arms crossed over his chest. (What Maul does know, of course, is primarily limited by what he’s been told. He has no idea the senator on the rooftop is his master is disguise, he has no idea what long game his master is really playing, nor who taught him, nor who funds the droid armies that will soon engulf the galaxy in war. What he does know is that, from the Senate roof, he caught a brief flash of his master’s presence somewhere in the building, deep within the heart of the corrupt Republic, and while his understanding of politics may be limited Maul knows damn well what an ambush is. He also knows something quite irrelevant to current events—or at least, not directly relevant: there is something buried deep beneath the Jedi Temple, something ancient and dark that spreads its influence in threads through the planet’s soil, not unlike the halfway sentient temples of the ancient Sith his master had sent him to.)

“Ah,” says Obi-Wan, “but we do know where your master likes to lurk about. You told us, remember?”

“He doesn’t _like_ Mustafar,” Maul answers automatically. Obi-Wan is playing an ancient trick, the game of corrected assumptions. It’s the first diplomat’s trick he learned, and an easy way to get information. “Mustafar is... convenient. Far away from prying eyes. Too hot for humans.” (His master is human, after all, and the constant burning heat of the volcanic planet takes its toll. Maul would find the molten rock and dancing sparks beautiful, if he could understand the meaning of the word.)

“Likes the cold, then?” Obi-Wan suggests casually. 

“It’s better for thick robes,” Maul concedes. (It doesn’t cross his mind that the robes his master is so partial to are well-suited to hiding Naboo and Coruscanti clothes beneath. Something similar does cross _Dooku’s_ mind, though, if only because he has tried to go undercover without sacrificing his silks a few too many times.)

“Wouldn’t want those catching fire,” says Obi-Wan, in a remarkably spot-on impression of Dooku’s grave tones, and the Sith’s eyes grow marginally wider at the mental image. “Though, what do I know, perhaps the Dark Side makes you resistant to fire.”

“It does not,” says Maul. “Sith can die of...” (Anything, really, including inconvenient fishbones. That particular tale is not recorded in the annals of any dark order, though it persists as part of a comedic ballad on a far-flung planet.) “...it does not make one resistant to fire.”

So that’s another note on Qui-Gon’s mental list of clues: Maul’s master is a human, prone to travel, with sufficient means to keep up at least one base and a travel route that he does not regularly use. It’s not quite the walls closing in on Darth Sidious, of course, but it’s a start, so when they are summoned to deliver Padmé Amidala back to her war-torn planet Qui-Gon goes with vague impression of things approaching the right path. (He foists the Sith apprentice off on Dooku, however. He’s not quite _that_ stupidly optimistic. Taking Anakin, though, feels somehow right.)

———————

Qui-Gon knows he was right to have faith in Padmé the moment he sets foot on that ship again. She’s channeled fear and despair into cool practicality, and he wonders, briefly, how a child queen can achieve what so many Jedi struggle to. There’s no easy answer, and that’s one of the many reasons why he always finds the locals he meets on missions to be so _interesting_. (He thinks much the same way of Padmé as he does of Jarjar and as he would of any other particularly bold example of local fauna, thinks of then with the benevolent interest of a greater creature. It’s not meant as harm on his part, and certainly many other Jedi are worse.) When he pledges that he and Obi-Wan will fight for Naboo, he means it with utmost sincerity. 

(Padmé has a clever plan and the Gungans have an army and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have the Force behind them. They’ll be fine for a while. There’s a more interesting thing taking place back on Coruscant, where Master Dooku is trying his own hand at interrogating the young Sith apprentice who has been so unceremoniously deposited in his charge. 

“Did you sense your master here, in the Temple?” he asks carefully. Maul frowns, well-trained distrust warring with the arrogant desire to show off. 

“There is a darkness in this temple,” he growls, “but it is not my master. It is an ancient thing, a reminder of the galaxy’s true masters.”

“Surely someone would notice such a thing, if it were truly here,” says Dooku, but he isn’t sure at all. The older he gets the more he doubts the teachings of the High Council, and the more he becomes aware of distant sense of wrongness. Maul scoffs. 

“Would they? They don’t even notice the darkness in _you_.” For him, it’s a trump card. If they don’t sense the rage and bitterness and doubt simmering beneath Dooku’s placid facade, then the Jedi can’t be expected to sense anything at all. It would just take the slightest push, the barest confirmation of his suppressed thought to send Yan Dooku spiraling into the dark—luckily for all present, Maul is hardly an expert in subtlety. 

“In me, child?” Dooku asks archly. His mask is perfect, long practiced and held in place by the respect his fellow Jedi hold for him. There is not a one among them who wishes to doubt the loyalty of an old master, after all, and many who have been Dooku’s students one way or another. Beneath the mask, Dooku bites down on anger and settles for curiosity. 

“Yes,” Maul continues. “I can sense the rage and hate within you. Why do you fight your true nature, your passion?” 

“My true nature is that of a Jedi,” says Dooku, and that is the case—from a certain point of view. From another, his true nature is in his devotion not to the Temple or to the Force but to his students, the ones who lived and the ones who died and the ones who suffer still. Fate has been fair to him, but not to many of his students, and he can’t forgive that. Things like this are why the Jedi preach against attachments. 

“Your true nature is with the Dark Side,” says Maul. “You know this to be true. The corruption within this temple, within the Senate—“

“The Senate?” That draws Dooku’s interest, as well it should. He doesn’t have friends in the Senate, exactly, but he does know many senators well enough and he has that deemed-improper variant of concern about the galaxy’s future that manifests as an interest in its general political goings-on. “What is—is that where you sensed your master?”

Maul only hesitates a moment. He’s not the best liar, really. That’s his master’s area. 

“Yes, though only briefly. It’s hardly a surprise that he has a grip on the very heart of your republic, my master’s power is beyond anything you could comprehend!”

The majority of that speech falls of deaf ears, because Dooku knows rather more about the Senate than his captive. He knows about the vote of no-confidence and the fall of Chancellor Valorum, he knows that a child queen called for it, and more importantly he has closely watched the meteoric rise of the senator from Naboo. Truth be told, he likes Sheev Palpatine, or at least likes the opportunity to talk politics with a well-educated and like-minded official over tea, but in that moment he sees a rather unpleasant web of inconsistencies and unfortunate patterns. How would the girl know an obscure rule of Senate proceedings? Why has the Federation acted now, of all times, and in Naboo of all places when any number of trade routes face the same taxes? Who commissioned the droid army marching on Naboo—surely not the Federation itself, they were hardly the sort to jump to war? It had been Hego Damask of the IGBC who has been pushing for military buildup decades prior, Hego Damask who, despite being a known recluse, would frequent the Senate halls with datapads in hand to lobby, on occasion, for his company’s interests, Hego Damask who had seemed to find some odd common ground with Senator Palpatine year’s before and had nearly been assassinated coming away from one such meeting. The old Muun banker had become even more of a hermit since then, but surely he still had dealings with his old associates….

Of course, Dooku has missed the target slightly. Damask is a paranoid old man who rarely leaves his study now, and he has not been on Coruscant in some years. He is not the enemy Dooku should seek and not the mastermind behind the events on Naboo. He is, however, a Sith Lord, master to Maul’s true master, and a funder and beneficial owner of, among other things, an extensive army of droids and the clone army being commissioned on Kamino. In many circles, that’s termed ‘close enough for government work’. 

So it is with this mostly accurate understanding of events that Dooku reaches the mostly accurate conclusion that his former padawan and grandpadawan are flying directly into a trap going to Naboo—though here, of course, he misses that one of the would-be jaws of the trap is sitting across from him and spouting off nonsense about incomprehensible power, and also that Anakin Skywalker is flying with them. Minor details, anyway. The fear that tightens an icy grip on his heart is reasonable enough: he doesn’t want to lose another apprentice to the machinations of greater creatures, and he certainly doesn’t want to lose Qui-Gon, the only constant light of hope he has had in recent memory. 

They say a Jedi’s master-padawan lineage tends to show shared traits, much like a blood family would. The fact that Dooku makes a split-second decision to requisition a ship, throw Maul in the back, and give chase to Naboo would rather support that theory.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time: more Dooku, of course, and also the Battle of Naboo!

On Naboo, little Padmé Amidala, who was meant to be a pawn in queenly regalia, brokers what will be the first of many military alliances in her career while dressed as a handmaiden. She kneels on the soggy soil and pleads her case, and the Gungans go to war alongside their human neighbors for the first time since the planet was colonized. (There are none alive who remember that now, of course, and the Naboo are peaceful people now, of course, they are victims of a great evil and there’s no point in saying now of all times that their ancestors had set bombs onto underwater cities once and poisoned the swamplands with rot and corpses. None alive remember the elder things now immortalized as distant silent gods of the swamp either, you see, but nonetheless both elder things and colonists and bombs and poison had been there once upon a different time. Soldiers of both sides are old enough to remember tales of the war that cost the Naboo their last hereditary king, though the tales told by grandparents in cities and swamplands are so dissimilar that the unaware may think they refer to different conflicts altogether. There were no armies then, though, so much as offworld mercenaries and guérilla offensives.) This time the Gungan army marches against faceless droid invaders whose commanders had, somehow, failed to count them among potential enemies. It’s a grave error that allegedly civilized creatures make often. 

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan move to retake Theed. They both claim to be better suited to diplomacy than to this, of course, Jedi are meant to be steadfast and neutral peacekeepers, guardians of the Republic and all its virtues, but these are desperate times and, well, they can hardly abandon Padmé and her people to their fate. Obi-Wan comments, in an undertone, that they are certainly sending a strong message about the Republic’s values to the representatives of the Trade Federation, and Qui-Gon hides his laughter behind an exploding battle droid. (Neither of them know it, but on Serreno in bygone days there was a saying: where on the planet does one find Serreno’s greatest diplomats? Why, in the armory.) They have the Force and surprise and righteousness behind them, but the Trade Federation fights a war of attrition. There will always be more droids. (Hego Damask has very deep pockets.) Even Jedi eventually grow weary. 

(Dooku knows enough about his enemy to know this, and from far above the planet he can see a glimpse of the future. Ships loaded with droid reinforcements are waiting, ready to descend and set loose their cargo on any particularly tenacious locals, and in the distance more of them are massing. This is bigger, anyone who knows their galactic politics would be able to see, than the Trade Federation and bigger than Naboo: it’s the first step of a war to change the face of all society. The worst part of knowing, to Dooku, is that part of him understands—nearly agrees. The Republic is broken, and sometimes the only way to deal with broken things is to destroy them and start anew. Naboo is beautiful, well-known, peaceful, the homeworld of a powerful senator, and of middling actual strategic importance, which makes it the perfect sacrificial lamb. The Republic holds a handful of such places that would make beautiful tragedies—Alderaan’s another, perhaps, or Serreno itself if one sought targets further afield—and beautiful tragedies make for excellent rallying cries. He thinks, idly, that he would have picked Alderaan himself, then quashes the thought. Qui-Gon and his apprentice would make beautiful tragedies too, so full of promise and light and felled before their time, loved so much more by the High Council now that they were beyond talking back—he quashes the thought. If he can help it, there will be no beautiful tragedies today. 

Taking potshots at the carrier ships is of little use, though, and Dooku’s always been better with a blade than a gun, so he lands on the far side of a droid battalion and reaches out, trying to catch the distant edge of the bond that once connected him to Qui-Gon. He’s out of practice, but it’s still enough that he feels the blaster shot hit.) 

In the palace in Theed, Qui-Gon’s step falters just slightly, just a bit, he’s tired and his mind keeps leaving the immediate fight to wander through prophecies and potential futures. It’s not even a whole second’s delay, really, but it’s enough for the blaster shot to get through his defenses and hit him in the shoulder, and _that’s_ enough to send his arm numb and send his saber clattering uselessly across the ground. He thinks in a flash of the Sith apprentice sitting, manacled and serious, biting back the truth of what Sith could die of—and of Anikin on Tatooine, so sincere in the thought that nothing and no one could kill a Jedi. 

(Miles away, Dooku struggles for calm. After all, even Jedi dreams can be mere figments of their imagination, and no matter how many times he sees Qui-Gon’s broken and butchered corpse in his mind that future may still not come to pass. It may just be nightmares, it may just be nothing—if only he could believe that. Despair and rage, in their purest form, make as short work of Jedi teachings as Force lightning does of a droid battalion, and by the time Maul manages to slip his manacles and pry his way out of the storage hold Dooku looks to him less like a Jedi and more like something implicitly familiar. Lucky thing, too—here on Naboo he’s far less outnumbered, and if he’d found an old _Jedi_ gasping for breath among the destruction he’d have killed the man. Instead, he politely asks Dooku for his saber back, and Dooku hands it over without thinking too much. Truth be told, he’s a bit past thinking at the moment.)

Qui-Gon can fight with his off hand, though not as well, and Obi-Wan feels him fall from the next room over and runs to his aid, and it should be good enough, but it isn’t—there’s a storm in the Force that’s ringing in his ears and blurring his senses, and he can’t quite tell where—or who—it’s coming from. All he can hope for is that Padmé can force the Viceroy to make the army stand down, and from this angle it’s a tall order. Treaties, in the end, don’t hold up well to blaster fire. (Where does one find Serreno’s greatest diplomats?) He has to hold out hope, though, because without hope there is nothing, so he tries to shut out the storm and trust in the Force. 

(The Force works in strange ways. A Sith apprentice and a fallen Jedi are tearing their way through a third the army the Viceroy has on the ground, the Gungan army is putting up a strong counteroffensive against the better part of the remainder, Obi-Wan will hold his place until he runs out of droids or out of strength, and Padmé and her handmaidens have the Viceroy backed into a corner. All of this is important. There’s also a boy and a droid in a borrowed Naboo starfighter, because Anakin’s quite important too, and there’s an ancient prophecy that’s been through quite a few translations and there’s a Sith Lord on Coruscant plotting conquest of the Republic and one far away on Munilist plotting conquest of death itself, and we shouldn’t forget them either—not in the least because Anakin’s birth was due to the latter’s machinations. Naboo is saved through many things, but the winning shot is fired by Anakin. Darth Plagueis—Hego Damask, to most, feels the ripple in the Force from worlds away and laughs.) 

————

Qui-Gon emerges from the palace in Theed leaning heavily on his apprentice’s shoulder, and sees frozen droids and destruction and feels the sensation of sunlight after rain. A battle is won, but something far bigger has started, something that carries the weight of destiny and future and meaning, and for the first time he doubts, truly doubts, that it’s a meaning he understands, even when Padmé hugs him in a moment of girlish exuberance and Obi-Wan cracks a relieved grin. The battle’s won, yes, but what of the war? What of what comes _after_ the war? These aren’t questions Qui-Gon is used to contemplating; as a disciple of the Living Force, he likes to focus on the immediate, but that’s not possible anymore. _Anakin’s_ made that impossible. 

(Well, here’s something _immediate_ to draw his attention.)

His old master stumbles into the celebration, and for a moment he’s unrecognizable. (It is difficult, for some, to picture teachers outside of their schoolrooms or doctors without uniforms on. For Qui-Gon, his mental image of Master Dooku will always be of a blank-faced, stately man in robes just a touch too elegant for the Temple, probably lecturing about the forms of lightsaber combat. It’s a good image, really, one the old man would approve of.) Dooku’s usually impeccable robes are singed and torn, and the skin on his hands is cracked and burned and his usually clear brown eyes are bloodshot and unfocused. When he reaches out to grab Qui-Gon by the arm, the gesture is violent enough to send both of them tumbling to the floor, though Qui-Gon lands on his knees and catches him clumsily. (Maul watches all this unfold with genuine curiosity.) 

“Had to warn you,” Dooku gasps out. (His throat is raw, as if he’s been screaming. He doesn’t remember if he has, doesn’t remember how he’s gotten here, doesn’t remember how the apprentice he last saw lying broken on the palace floor is now holding him up. No matter.) “I—it’s too late—the Sith—it’s all _planned_ —” A look of realization crosses Dooku’s face, even as he stares past Qui-Gon and into nothingness. “ _You were there_ —ask Sifo-Dyas, he’ll know— _Hego Damask_ —” And then he goes limp in Qui-Gon’s arms. 

———————

The day is won, but Qui-Gon’s mind wanders worse than it has since he was an apprentice. It wanders to his former master, now safely tended to by medical droids (do they know what to do with electrical burns beneath the skin? do they know what to do if he wakes as something other, if the corruption of the Dark Side consumes him? do they know what to do if it doesn’t?), it wanders to Anakin (hero of the hour, of course, and if ever there was proof of a child’s importance to the future of the galaxy this was it, but how did he know? what had moved him, what had guided him—this is some part of the Force that is alien to Qui-Gon), it wanders to the High Council (for all their rules and regulations and concerns, they’d done nothing for Dooku, or for Anakin, or, stars above, for Obi-Wan, whom they were so willing to abandon young), it wanders to the Sith apprentice (the flashes of change, monster to child and back again, seem to come at random, but there has to be a trigger— _something_ must have happened in the five minutes between Maul drawing his saber in an ultimately futile attempt to strike Qui-Gon down from behind and Maul perched on a column base asking completely valid questions about Ob-Wan’s braid) and it wanders to the boy’s hidden master (ask Sifo-Dyas _what_? find Hego Damask and do _what_? Qui-Gon’s never longed for clear and precise instructions, but Dooku’s warning is cryptic at best and the threat of the mysterious Lord Sidious looms large in some indeterminate distance)—

“Master _Jedi_.” Qui-Gon blinks and returns to the moment with what feels like an ungainly thud. Senator—right, no, _Chancellor_ Palpatine is standing in front of him, wearing celebratory finery and a bemused grin. (Understandable, as he’s been trying to get Qui-Gon’s attention politely for the past five minutes to no avail.) He cuts a slightly foppish figure, and Qui-Gon wonders how so politically powerful and clearly competent a man can have so little presence in the Force. One of life’s mysteries, to be sure. 

“Chancellor,” he replies. “My apologies, the battle still weighs on my mind.” The battle stays in the past where it belongs. It’s a convenient excuse, though, and one Palpatine appears to buy—the chancellor bows his head briefly in understanding. 

“Of course—I only meant to express the debt of gratitude I owe you. When I think of what could have become of my homeworld…” His normally placid voice wavers and he turns his face away to hide emotion. (The Naboo place a high value on the appearance of ethereal calm. That’s why their nobles paint their faces so—whether it’s Padmé or a handmaiden done up in the queenly costume, it renders the girl’s face a blank mask. Palpatine wears no makeup, but his usual expressions are a study in practiced blankness just as well.) The barely-there Force signature flickers, anger and desire for revenge where Qui-Gon expects sorrow. But what of that? He’d hardly be the first man so swayed by darker emotion. 

“It is our duty to protect the peace and the citizens of the galaxy,” Qui-Gon assures him. “I will do everything in my power to make sure such a tragedy doesn’t come to Naboo—or any other planet.” (He’s supposed to say _citizens of the Republic_ but he’s thinking too much of Tatooine.) Palpatine smiles thinly. 

“Yes, I am sure you will,” he says. “Please understand that you have my full support in any such action you need to take. It may be improper to say so without the full Senate’s approval but… Well. Awaiting the full Senate’s approval didn’t save Naboo. You did.” 

Qui-Gon almost corrects him then, almost points him at Anakin (who’s playing with some of the younger handmaidens and looks for all the stars like an ordinary child), almost says something utterly idiotic about prophecies and salvation and balance, but instead he holds his tongue, bows, and recites all the correct words about the will of the Force. (It’s not that he doesn’t trust Palpatine. Telling the truth about Anakin would mean explaining something he doesn’t quite understand, so he just… won’t.) Palpatine says all the correct words about honor and valor back, and they part ways. (Sidious seethes beneath his pleasant facade. He can smell a secret being kept back, he can see his apprentice in manacles not ten feet away being lectured at by some padawan, and in his current position he can’t just kill the lot of them no matter how tempting it is. No matter. Events are already in motion that will change the face of the galaxy, and Sidious just has to be patient and watch the pieces fall.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I like Dooku primarily because he's played by Christopher Lee? Maybe. Is there plot coming to this fic? Absolutely, I promise.


	4. Chapter 4

Obi-Wan is knighted with all the proper pomp and circumstance. It’s good for him, Qui-Gon thinks, all the ceremony and ritual and the chance to be the center of attention, and the boy practically glows with happy pride even though he’s doing his best to remain midway between straight-faced and exasperated. It’s endearing, even Mace cracks a grin when he pats Obi-Wan on the shoulder. Qui-Gon is proud too, of course, that goes without saying, surely. Had Dooku been proud to knight him, decades before? he wonders, then pushes the thought from his mind. He’s still drifting far too much. 

(Well, _yes_. A being far more powerful than Qui-Gon Jinn would find itself reeling if it had been hit with the sheer amount of Force-fluctuations Qui-Gon’s had a front row seat for in the past three days. It’s the mystical equivalent of multiple untreated concussions capped off by a stressed and yammering nine-year-old, very little sleep and a great deal of research, a constantly present Sith, and a large quantity of alcohol. It’s a testament to _something_ that he’s still standing at all.)

Master Yoda is avoiding him. It’s very annoying, as this is the ideal time to press his request to take Anakin as an apprentice, but clearly the old goblin thinks it’s the ideal time to demonstrate that he can pass under every table in the Temple, much to the delight of the younglings. Someone needs to keep an eye on Anakin, though, someone who knows and understands—if he’s left to the whims of the Council, there’s no good that can come of it. In the meantime—in the meantime nothing, because Sifo-Dyas is meditating at Dooku’s bedside and not to be disturbed and Obi-Wan’s a knight now and… And it has been an exhausting three days. He drops onto the nearest couch. 

“Master Qui-Gon?” Damn it.

“Yes?” The young knight facing him is named Vos, and he’s one of several whom Qui-Gon primarily remembers as rambunctious teenage padawans and Obi-Wan’s crechemates. Of course, Voss (given name Quinlan) hasn’t been a teenager or a padawan in some years (he’s Obi-Wan’s age almost to the day, funnily enough, and had been apprenticed and knighted early). He still looks the part, though, scruffy and cheerfully disorganized, and he’s holding a whole bottle of something _very_ alcoholic. 

“Meant to say—sorry about missing you on Tatooine, I saw you in the city but, y’know, deep cover and stuff—didn’t know there was a whole Sith Lord on the prowl—” He gestures vaguely with the bottle. “Should’a stepped in to help, done my bit.”

“We did manage to capture him,” says Qui-Gon. Not that backup wouldn’t have been helpful, but Vos had clearly had his own mission and Qui-Gon hasn’t ever needed help from some freshly-knighted _youngling_. (That’s a bit harsh. Vos has a specific set of skills that makes him invaluable to the Council and would perhaps be of use in digging up more clues about Maul’s master. After all, even if the Sith apprentice won’t — or can’t — disclose information aloud, there’s plenty he may remember. Then again, some of his memories are dark indeed, and Quinlan Vos is not well-warded against the darkness.)

“Well, yeah, but…” the young knight trails off, uncertain. (What he’s thinking, what he won’t say aloud to his friend’s former master at his friend’s knighting, is _why_? Why is the Sith alive and pacing a cell deep within the Temple? Surely if such a creature can be captured, it can also be killed, and surely the galaxy would be better for that. He’s missing, of course, that Qui-Gon’s only _slightly_ demented drive to protect any and all creatures weaker than him extends even to monsters, even to Sith apprentices, in much the same way it had extended to garden weeds and mice when he’d been a child. Dooku had internally bemoaned his apprentice’s tendency to adopt the most miserable of lifeforms, but in a perhaps unexpected stroke of empathy for the boy had never turned his charges out.)

“But nothing,” says Qui-Gon. “There’s no point in dwelling on hypotheticals—I take it your mission on Tatooine is through?”

“Yes,” Vos draws the word out, then pauses. It’s not a trick that’s going to work on a master, though Qui-Gon assumes many of Vos’s peers would rush to fill the void with explanations. (Vos wants a scrap of something, anything to work from here. His mission on Tatooine was a success, yes, but it seems like an utterly irrelevant one when planets are being invaded and royals are being rescued and the Senate is turning on itself and the Sith have returned. He’s not wrong to fear what’s coming. A bit of fear sharpens the senses and leaves people alert to possible dangers, and that split second may be enough to save a life.) “And yours?”

“We wouldn’t be here had it failed,” says Qui-Gon dryly, gesturing with his good arm at the general festivities. Vos frowns. 

“If you don’t tell me anything, I’ll have to get Obi-Wan incredibly drunk and interrogate him, you know.” Getting incredibly drunk the night of one’s knighting is an unofficial tradition. Some masters may frown upon it, but those same masters did much the same in their own youths. Qui-Gon himself doesn’t remember most of the night or day following his knighting, and there’s a persistent rumor around the Temple that Dooku spent the night after his own knighting hopped up on enough glitterstim to down a rancor. Of course, Qui-Gon can’t really be sure of the veracity of that rumor, but he still finds its existence amusing. 

“Knight Vos, are you threatening my former padawan with a good time?” he asks. “Because if you are, I may have to hold you to it. Obi-Wan deserves a break.” (The fact that, at the moment, he and his former padawan may have different ideas of what constitutes a break does not cross Qui-Gon’s mind.) 

“Fine, fine, you’re as bad as the rest of them, you know that?” Vos says with an exasperated sigh. “Obi-Wan’s sure to be more chatty..” And then he meanders off, already slightly wobbly, to catch Obi-Wan in a one-armed hug and start rallying his former classmates to what is colloquially termed an after-party. 

(By then, the Anakin question has been resolved without any input from Qui-Gon or the Council writ-large whatsoever. Three days of excitement have caught up to Anakin, and he has fallen asleep from pure exhaustion and relief under the arm of Master Plo Koon. The Temple, to Anakin, is large and unfamiliar and full of shadows and frightening things and so very very far from home, but Master Plo with his strange mask and rough skin somehow feels almost familiar. He’s steady and calm and, unlike the other members of the Council and unlike even Master Qui-Gon, he doesn’t look at Anakin like there’s a cloud over his head. Plo Koon, after all, has seen more than his share of scared children and heard more than his share of legends and prophecies, and he sees the Anakin of the moment quite well—a lonely, scared child adrift in an unfamiliar world. Futures, clouded and dark as they may be, are uncertain and malleable, and for once Anakin sleeps without dreaming.)

—————

With the young knights gone off to celebrate and the younglings and apprentices sent off to bed, quiet descends over the Temple. It should be peaceful, but instead it throws the undercurrent of worry and fear into sharp relief. Plo Koon seems like a particularly annoying beacon of stability, and Qui-Gon retreats to his quarters fighting an underlying sense of aggravation. Master Plo is a good teacher, Anakin needs a teacher, of course it doesn’t have to be Qui-Gon himself—but he’d wanted it. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have knighted Obi-Wan if he’d known someone else would take Anakin. (On one hand, it’s pettiness on his part, but on another it’s a desperate urge to keep control of something even as he senses the galaxy starting on an unstoppable spiral, and on a third he can’t shake the worry that Obi-Wan is still too angry, still too thin-skinned, still too close to the Dark Side not to fall victim to it the way Xanatos had. It’s paranoia on his part. No one being can control the future of the galaxy, and Obi-Wan stands no closer to the edge than any of the other young knights he’s currently taking shots with. That doesn’t mean he won’t fall as much as it means any of them can.)

Sifo-Dyas is still meditating, so Qui-Gon drags himself back to his own quarters and tries, for what feels like the umpteenth time, to find some connection between the Senate, the Sith, and Hego karking Damask on the Holonet. There isn’t anything more than there was in the morning—some records of IGBC lobbyist at the Senate, an assassination attempt that, while gory, doesn’t seem to be Sith-related, a smattering of decades-old meetings and lectures. _You were there,_ Dooku had said, but all Qui-Gon remembers from his brief meeting with Damask is having gotten into a rather heated debate about whether or not the IGBC was fomenting discontent to push its profit margins—a debate which had ended with the old Muun laughing and wandering off to chat with Dooku and Sifo-Dyas. (Qui-Gon had been very young at the time, and he’d no way of knowing he’d made a good impression on Damask, or rather, on Plagueis, insofar as one could make a good impression on such a creature. Cleverness, an eye for detail and for truth, even coming from a loud-mouthed and antagonistic young Jedi, were valuable.) 

What had happened that day? What had been put into motion? Is Damask the chessmaster, or a pawn in a greater game? (There isn’t a clear answer to that question, as easy as it may appear at first glance. The line of Bane is legion, two by two, and Plagueis and Sidious alike carry out a plan that was set in place centuries before at the whim of the nearly-sentient thing that is the Dark Side of the Force.) Where did it start and where will it end? Qui-Gon drifts off to an uneasy sleep, a dense public document on the political donations by various Damask Holdings entities still pulled up on his datapad. He dreams of prophets and Sith Lords and light over the desert and cities bathed in blood, of weapons never before seen in the galaxy, of an uncivilized age and the end of an era, and even as he dreams he wishes he could make sense of it all and stop it, turn boiling seas smooth and calm and keep forever a pleasant autumn afternoon from five years ago. He can’t, of course. No power can do that. 

(Far away on Muunilinst, an automated program flags a series of searches and attaches them to an image caught through the hijacked viewport of Qui-Gon’s holopad, because it can do that. The information is dutifully run up the chain by Magister Damask’s loyal subordinates, most of whom don’t stop to read it and the rest of whom don’t really understand it, and a Muun girl of no great importance knocks, shyly, on the Magister’s door to deliver it. The Magister is old-fashioned that way, he likes to have hard copies of things and sometimes really does want problems escalated all the way to his desk. The girl is in her twenties, good with maths and not much else, and entertains a brief curiosity about why her boss would be interested in the surface-level investigations of an unfamiliar human. Her lot isn’t to wonder why, though, so she hands the disc over with utmost decorum and bows politely. The Magister runs through the contents of the disc with an expert eye, then nods and asks her name. What a chance, that! The last person who had been so asked had received double-pay for two months, while the one before that had been banished from the planet. 

“ _Don’t be scared_ ,” the Magister wheezes through the artificial jaw and neck. Calm doesn’t so much settle over her as much as it hits her like a racing speeder. What’s there to be scared of? Nothing. The Magister knows everything. “ _You will assist me in making a recording._ ”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do rather think Anakin would benefit from an actual real adult being involved in his training, and everyone likes Plo Koon, right? Right. Also, can I write Star Wars fic without Darth Plagueis turning up in a speaking role? So far the answer is no.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s not until well past noon the next day that Qui-Gon manages to corner Sifo-Dyas. The man seems worried sick, pale and drawn and fidgeting with the rumpled sleeves of his robes. 

“How’s Dooku doing?” Qui-Gon asks, and the older Jedi nearly jumps, like an apprentice with a guilty secret. (He does have a guilty secret, and it weighs heavily on his soul. If he’d listened, if he’d acted earlier, would his dear friend be alright? Yan Dooku has protected him when they had been students together, had helped him parse through any number of incomprehensible visions, and now he lay somewhere unreachable, another victim of the coming Dark.)

“He hasn’t woken,” Sifo-Dyas answers. “Do you wish to—he was your master, after all.”

“I wished to speak with you,” Qui-Gon says firmly. There is nothing, he thinks, to be gained from sitting at Dooku’s bedside now. Sifo-Dyas stares at him with a blank lack of understanding that’s hardly befitting a Jedi of his rank. (It is through attachments that the soul can be wounded, after all. Looking for a loved one’s salvation and finding only darkness is a familiar story, and it has played out in the Temple far more often than any would admit. Sifo-Dyas is exhausted and heartbroken and, at the moment, not much of a Jedi master at all.)

“I… certainly, Master Jinn. What can I do for you?” 

“On Naboo,” Qui-Gon says, and he doesn’t mention the electrical burns they both saw or the wild, mad look in Dooku’s eyes, “my former master told me to find Hego Damask. He seemed to think you would know—something. Anything.”

“He warned us of what was coming,” says Sifo-Dyas. “Somehow he knew—the same things I had foreseen, the patterns of events. I suppose—“ A flicker of his former self returns to him. “—precognition _would_ be of use to a banker, wouldn’t it? Perhaps someone he knew—no matter. He knew what was coming, and he warned us—on Serenno, and then again—but no one _listened_ —I should have _listened_!”

“He was helping?” That thought brings Qui-Gon up short. His mind had cast Damask, quite automatically, as a villain, but Sifo-Dyas appears to have cast him as an oracle. 

“Helping…?” the other Jedi echoes. “Yes—no—he, he _knew_ , he warned us.” (There is a difference, of course, between foreseeing the future and warning someone of actions you are about to take. Sifo-Dyas has a talent for the former, and Plagueis a tendency toward the latter that is born of both an urge to brag and a fundamental curiosity about whether someone will someday stop him. He’ll have his answer in a matter of hours.) 

“I think,” says Qui-Gon very carefully, because his training is catching up to his stress level and this isn’t a chat between Jedi as much as it is an interrogation, and once it is an interrogation it becomes very simple to compartmentalize things. Sifo-Dyas isn’t a master Qui-Gon has known since he was a child, he’s a witness. Dooku isn’t his teacher, he’s a victim, and Damask is a suspect and the Sith are merely enemies. “I think this calls for a cup of tea, Master. How about I make one?” There’s only a hint of the Force behind his words, but Sifo-Dyas folds and obeys without struggle. (Of course he does. Qui-Gon doesn’t quite know his own value to some Jedi.)

More importantly, when he’s kneeling on a cushion and holding a cup of red loreyan tea, he talks.

(The Chiss, who make their home in what the Republic so self-centeredly calls the Unknown Regions, tell a story about a clever strategist from days gone by. Her planet was divided in three, and the strategist wished for her kingdom to triumph over the other two. To achieve her ends, she went and whispered of coming war, first to the southern kingdom, for they feared their hold over the planet’s wealth was threatened, and then to eastern kingdom, for they feared that none respected their historical claims. As she bargained with the southerners to march into battle, she likewise wept at the feet of the eastern king and begged him for an alliance. Together they routed the southern army and laid claim to its vast wealth, and when the eastern king turned his back for a moment she slew him where he stood. The Chiss are practical creatures, and they note that the clever strategist then lived a long and happy life ruling over those who had once served her enemies. 

What is happening now in the Galactic Republic is much the same thing, though the Chiss strategist when depicted in portraits is far prettier than any Sith Lord. Plagueis, as Damask, has driven the Trade Federation and its ilk into foaming-at-the-mouth fury at the thought of the Senate expanding its control over the various business interests. The fact that many of these organizations vary only in size and profit margin from the slaver warlords of the outer rim is irrelevant to them—they believe with utter certainty that the galactic government wishes to drain them dry and centralize control over various resource-rich planets and trade routes, and they are willing to go to great lengths to prevent this. That, of course, is common knowledge since the Battle of Naboo, though the IGBC’s direct role is somewhat obscured. Meanwhile, Damask has been prophecizing war to all and sundry in an attempt to rally the Republic to the production of an army. The Senate, of course, is bound by too many regulations—he leaves that part to Sidious, who seems to truly enjoy the politicking—but individuals are not. What Plagueis really wants is Yan Dooku, because he comes with all the wealth and status that Serenno has to offer, but Dooku is just a shade too stubborn to fall without more direct influence. Gentle, nervous Sifo-Dyas will do just as well for signing his name to the deed for an army of clones, all the more so because he is ever so prone to believe visions that are placed in his mind. 

Anyway, this is how Qui-Gon learns about the clone army significantly before Plagueis and Sidious want anyone to learn about the clone army. Sifo-Dyas doesn’t know Plagueis’s motivations, but he does know the IGBC has willingly footed the bill. For him, that makes its head a loyal subject of the Republic, though Qui-Gon has his doubts.) 

After assuring Sifo-Dyas that he’s surely done nothing wrong (debatable, but really the kinder option) and escorting him back to his room, Qui-Gon is left with a great deal to mull over. Not the least of it all is this: Sifo-Dyas swears blind that Damask no longer leaves his home (or perhaps office) on Muunilinst, which Holonet reports back up. He can be a Sith Lord, may well be one, but he can’t be the Sith from the Senate building. 

“There’s supposed to be _two_ ,” says Qui-Gon out loud to no one in particular, because two Sith are a genuine problem but three (or more?) just seems rude. The Force neither confirms nor denies this, so he sighs shortly and goes to find Obi-Wan. Hopefully the boy is up to a trip to Muunilinst after his night out. (He is not.) 

The plan is cut short by a news broadcast running in the canteen, some sort of tabloid nonsense that no one will confess to leaving on. The elusive chairman of the IGBC has been spotted in Coruscant—here there’s a bit of shoddy video of an elderly Muun, much older than the Damask that Qui-Gon remembers, leaning on the arm of an elegantly dressed human who somehow manages to spend the entire clip safely out of view—perhaps to press his agenda in the Senate! What does this mean for the future of trade deals? As the two are very clearly entering an opera house, Qui-Gon doubts it has the least bit of impact on the future of trade deals. But, fine, all the better, they can intercept Damask in the morning, stall his shuttle, do _something_ —

Since Obi-Wan isn’t anywhere to be found, Qui-Gon’s restless wanderings draw him underground, where the Sith apprentice is sitting quietly in his cell. Someone (read: Jocasta Nu, in a moment of perhaps misplaced sympathy) has left him reading material, and he’s slowly spinning an image of a pair of tattooed zabraks riding on rancorback. The quality’s less than optimal, but even from a distance Qui-Gon can see the similarities to the tattoos that mark Maul’s face. The apprentice’s yellow eyes flicker up at his approach. 

“They’re Dathomiri,” he says, oddly quiet. 

“Is that your homeworld? Dathomir?” Qui-Gon asks. Live in the moment, he thinks, and don’t fixate. Maul shakes his head. 

“I don’t recall a homeworld. The—the archivist said my tattoos look similar.” It’s not a question, but the plea for assurance hangs in the air anyway. 

“They do,” Qui-Gon confirms. He isn’t sure what else to say. Maul only seems to know of his own master, after all, and even that is a matter of pseudonyms and secret bases. It’s unlikely he knows Damask as anything except an economic entity. 

“Interesting,” Maul says in a way that’s meant to sound dismissive but ends up a bit too sincere. “It isn’t,” he adds, “part of your Republic.”

“Is that very important?” Qui-Gon asks. Maul’s gaze is fixed on the holo image as if he can will it to life. 

“It means it may not be destroyed,” he says, and for a moment he sounds almost hopeful. Qui-Gon smiles encouragingly. 

“It may not. In fact, we may stop your master before anything is destroyed at all.”

“Oh,” says Maul. “You think so? You’re wrong. It’s already too late.” And he curls against the back wall of the cell and refuses to say another word. 

—————

Qui-Gon ponders the matter of the clones for another two hours, then gives up and goes to tell the Council. It’s their job to have something intelligent to say on such matters, to be able to stop the madness that Damask wrought in its tracks. Instead of doing that, though, they debate long through the night as to whether or not the real problem was Sifo-Dyas acting without their approval, with nary a word against the creation of soldiers grown only to die to combat an army that surely could be stymied by any other means. 

Qui-Gon sits and listens and feels his blood grow cold and formulates some half-mad plan to catch Damask—to stake out the Senate—to fly to Kamino and order a stop himself, but he’s a master of the Jedi Order. He can’t do things like that. Instead, he closes his eyes and reaches out to the Force, wishing for some sort of a sign to guide him. There is no peace in the Force tonight, though, only the storm. 

(A brief speeder ride away, in a Coruscant high-rise that gleams clean and chrome, Darth Sidious murders his master and takes his place as the Dark Lord of the Sith. It’s been a long time coming, this murder, and he wonders briefly is Plagueis accepts it. He certainly doesn’t fight back, though that may be because the lightning has shorted out the complex mechanical apparatus that had allowed him to speak and eat. 

In his rooms in the Jedi Temple, Sifo-Dyas tries to will himself to be calm in the face of a torrential onslaught of visions. It’s harder each time, and he’s seen so many. A curious apprentice will find him bleeding on the floor come morning, and he’ll spend the next few months at his dear friend’s side in a different way. 

There are other pieces on the board too, however, and they should be noted as well. Let’s stick to the ones doing important things today. A man scarred with the symbol of the broken circle meets with an envoy of the Trade Federation who thinks their goals may align for a time. On Rattatak, a Jedi dies and his student falls to despair and vengeance. The mad queen of the Bando Gora kills two of Sidious’s agents. A Dathomiri witch sees, for the first time, a broadcast from beyond her homeworld. All of this chaos, all of this is change.)

The Council, with all semblance of sorrow and deep thought, declare the clone army a good failsafe. None of them like it, they say, but if tremors in the Force and talk of the Sith are true, they may need it. (Plo Koon dissents politely, but has tendered his resignation from the Council itself some midway through the debate, for fear that it would be forgotten in its aftermath.) Qui-Gon throws up his hands and (doesn’t storm out, no, he doesn’t give in to rage) walks out just a little too quickly and takes just a little too long to collect himself afterwards.

Just a little. Really, it’s hardly noticeable, especially to those too busy debating the future of the Republic.

He’s calmer and showered and in the process of helping Obi-Wan sort through a datatape collection that had somehow tripled in size and fused with Qui-Gon’s own when the Muun girl knocks on his door. She’s pale and young and dressed in a neat gown, but has a distant look in her eye that makes Obi-Wan instinctively go for his saber.

“Are you the Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn?” she asks. At his nod of confirmation she holds out a neatly wrapped package. “I am to deliver this to you. It is a gift for the Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn from Magister Hego Damask.”

———————

It’s a trap. Of course it’s a trap. The worst sort, too, because the bait is a living being. The girl stares into the middle distance over Qui-Gon’s shoulder as he tries and fails miserably to free her from the Force-grip on her mind. 

“The magister says, he’s not going to let me go until you make use of his gift,” she says calmly. “He knows everything. He sees everything.”

“Bold words for someone who sends an intermediary into the Jedi Temple,” says Obi-Wan. 

“The magister says, he can make me walk off a building or onto your lightsaber if you put up a fuss,” the girl replies. “The magister says, that isn’t something Jedi want.”

“What’s your name?” Qui-Gon asks gently. 

“Marit. Marit Chuus. The magister says, if you know my name you won’t harm me.” 

“Marit. Do you know what the gift is?” Whatever it is radiates darkness and corruption, which seems a bit silly since it’s wrapped in pretty green paper. 

“No. The magister says, it is something you will understand.” 

As far as traps go, this one is tailor-made to play on Qui-Gon’s protectiveness, Obi-Wan’s righteousness, and the often near-fatal curiosity that seems to plague their lineage. He takes the package and unwraps it warily. 

It turns out to be three separate objects, neatly stacked. One is a hardcopy book, old-fashioned but clearly new, without a title or author on the cover. The second is a recording disc, ready to be activated, and the third is a black fabric box, which itself contains—

“Master? Is that… a holocron?” Obi-Wan’s hesitance is justified—even Qui-Gon hasn’t seen a holocron quite like this before. It’s in the shape of a tetrahedron with a star-shaped indentation on one of its bases, and glows a deep, pulsing red under the pitch-dark ornamentation that holds it shut, threads of gold weaving through it like crackles of lightning. Qui-Gon is hesitant to touch it, so powerful is the dark energy radiating from it. (There are dark things hidden away in the Jedi Archives, and every once in a while a new one is discovered and retrieved, but so far that duty hasn't fallen to Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan. Good for them, really, lucky for them; prolonged exposure to such things can cause irreparable harm to the mind, particularly, it is said, in those attuned to the Living Force.)

“Yes,” he says. “That, Obi-Wan, is a Sith holocron.” The thing pulses brighter. (One would almost think it pleased to be correctly named.)

“The magister says, it is a puzzle to expand your mind, Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn,” says Marit placidly. 

“Do I use that to free you, or one of these?” He rather doubts Damask means him to operate the holocron on the spot, after all. “Minds are finicky things, expanding them is a long process.”

“The magister says, you should get started then.” The words carry enough malice to make up for the girl’s flat tone. She blinks suddenly. “I think he means you to start with the recording.”

“That’s quite sensible,” Qui-Gon agrees. Through all this, his tone remains amicable. It has to, he has to, that’s what he’s trained for. That placidity looks awfully close to emotionlessness, but in reality is a master class in compartmentalizing. This is a hostage negotiation, after all. “Will you sit?”

Marit obediently drops onto a cushion and sits with her hands folded in her lap. There’s nothing else to be done (another attempt to push the magister from her mind goes about as well as pushing a solid wall) so Qui-Gon places the recording in a projector and sits back to listen. It hums for a moment, then the image of a tall man in a dark cloak stands over the disk. He pulls his hood from his head and is rendered identifiable as Hego Damask. 

“Jedi,” he says in a low, wheezing voice. “If you have received this recording, I have correctly anticipated my own death at the hands of my apprentice. Even as I record this, I hope that I am wrong—that Sidious values our victory more than he valued his own power. Unlikely as it may be—living things always cling to hope, don’t we?” The magister chuckles, which sounds more like a cough. “I may be dead, but I know you. And you, I think, know me. Of all the Jedi I have seen in my life—and believe me, there have been many—only you have dared to question my goals. An eye for detail and imperfection, the ability to draw conclusions from gaps, we value that.” He pauses for a moment. “We the _muun_ , that is, not we as in the Sith. Upon coming into our true selves, we are supposed to give up that which ties us to our pasts, but that never quite works, does it? No. Do forgive an old man’s ramblings—I find there is so much I still wish to say, and so little _substance_ to it. The sum of it is, you were quite right to challenge me on Serenno. This war—for war it shall be—is the culmination of efforts to destroy the Jedi and Galactic Republic, which have been helped along in no small part by the nature of the Republic and the Jedi yourselves. But I am a selfish creature, you see, we Muun often are, and the Sith are vengeful and full of hate, and I will not give my life’s work over to my killer. You suit my purposes well enough—would that I could have found a student with a more… fundamental understanding of this universe. In the book you will find my research into the workings of the Force and the teachings of our philosophical ancestors. That which they deemed magic and prophecy are merely things their science has yet to comprehend, and with the correct application of reason we—or rather, you of the future, may yet grasp. In the holocron—well, that is an answer bound within a question. If you can open it, you will find many an answer which you seek, and many a foundation upon which to find answers. Facing the end, I can see that my knowledge is incomplete. I have pushed at the currents of the Force like a barbarian sorcerer, rather than master them as a scientist ought, but they have moved nonetheless. See that you grow something from the chaos we have instigated, for all that is left for me, I fear, is the sight of stars blinking out.”

The image of the magister looks up briefly, then bends in a stiff, painful bow before fading out. (Thus ends the tragedy of Darth Plagueis, one who sought to be wise.) 

Across the table, Marit blinks once, twice, then gasps with hastily muffled shock before stumbling through some incoherent apologies—clearly herself again, and clearly scared half out of her wits. Qui-Gon shuts the box containing the Sith holocron and gets the girl some honeyed tea before arranging a ship to take her back home. (Marit Chuus is not relevant to the destiny of the galaxy. She will return to Muunilinst and find comfort in her sums and figures, and carry on as a certified accountant of the IGBC. Statistically speaking, it is not accountants that die during wartime, and this visit to Coruscant is her sole instance of being a statistical anomaly. The package she has delivered is a different story.)


	6. Chapter 6

What Qui-Gon should do, absolutely, is deliver the holocron to the High Council, complete with all the details he knows about Damask and his machinations. He should, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sticks the holocron into one of the deep pockets of his robes and pointedly ignores Obi-Wan’s dubious glare. 

“Master,” says Obi-Wan in a tone that has, since the dawn of spoken language, been employed by parents and teachers dealing with truly aggravating youngsters. It strikes Qui-Gon, for a brief and stupid moment, that the boy sounds like Dooku had some decades prior—the same careful, clipped tones, the same air of superiority and exasperation. 

“I’ll handle it,” Qui-Gon says firmly, though whether he means the holocron, the Sith, or the council is rather up for debate. Obi-Wan glares for a moment more, then sighs and shakes his head. (This is where he differs, of course, from the old man, for all the traits they share. There’s an inherent kindness to Obi-Wan that his grandmaster lacks. They both love desperately and can hate passionately and are too clever by half to be truly held in place by orders from above, but Obi-Wan can love selflessly while Dooku hoards what he wishes were his like some beast from a myth.)

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Obi-Wan mutters, then squares his shoulders. “Alright, then. Where do we start?” Qui-Gon grins.

“How about with our zabrak friend?”

—————

(It should be noted that Maul isn’t stupid. He’s a lot of things that are often mistaken for stupid—young, for one, and proud and impulsive and angry and impatient, and naive in his own twisted way, and starved for attention and validation, and about as subtle as a durasteel pipe to the head—but under all that is an intelligent and fairly practical mind that is very quick to learn. Subtlety and manipulation and strategy will come in time, and for now he’s learned quite a bit during his captivity. 

First, he has learned that skilled as he is, he is no match for more than one fully trained Jedi. That’s reasonable, loathe as he is to admit such a weakness—he’s has no practice crossing sabers with trained opponents, really, and haunting and hunting from the shadows is no replacement for experience. Bound and unarmed as he is, he stands even less of a chance, so he sits quietly and tries to channel his fury into something that can pick through the force dampeners on his wrists and ankles. It’s slow going, but patience is a virtue even for the Sith. 

Second, he has learned that for some reason he is of more value to the Jedi alive than dead. He doesn’t quite understand why—perhaps they think he can still provide information?—but it is a fact he is more than willing to take advantage of. He doesn’t _want_ to die at their hands, so he sits quietly and obeys and waits for a weakness to exploit. Of course, the fact that Master Nu pities him or that Qui-Gon would beg mercy for his own would-be killer doesn’t cross his mind. Those concepts are in a large part learned, you see, and Maul has never been taught them. 

Third, he has learned that the Jedi like to talk, and that there is a very good reason why his master prefers him silent. Talking reveals all sorts of things, all sorts of weaknesses, though Maul thinks he’s gathered more information than he’s let slip. He knows now, approximately, the layout of the floor of the Temple above his head and where his weapon has been hidden, and knows whom to use as an excuse if he’s caught wandering—he practices whispering it so the words sound less clumsy, _I wanted to return these to Master Nu_ —before he can arm himself again, and he knows, to an extent, what he can use to bargain his master down from the inevitable fury that accompanies failure. 

One more deep breath and the dampeners clatter from his wrists. Maul allows himself a victorious grin, though his master prefers him stoic too. It always seems a bit odd to him—the mantras of the Sith embrace passion, after all, and his master preaches rage, and neither of those things are quiet and expressionless as far as he’s concerned—but it isn’t his role to question Master Sidious’s teachings. With his hands free, he makes short work of the dampeners at his ankles and then of the door of the cell itself, which is meant to be resistant to a great many things but not to a key going in its lock, grabs the datapads meant to function as excuses or impromptu weapons, and slips out into the hall. 

It’s a simple enough plan: he needs his saber and he needs a ship. Sowing havoc through the Temple would be nice, but it’s secondary. Finding and kidnapping the human apprentice who had been so willing to explain so many things is _really very stupid_ , but Maul is so starved for the company of a peer that he seriously considers it. That is a sign of Sidious’s failure as a teacher, because had Maul been left to something he could perceive as his own devices and allowed to sate his curiosity about other people, he would quickly have discovered the vast majority of them to be impractical and the greater part of those to be significantly stupider than him, and then redoubled his efforts to surpass the remainder in all ways and thus rendered himself a monster comparable to his master. Of course, Sidious doesn’t want a _student_ , for the students of Sith Lords are prone to surpassing and killing their masters. Sidious wants a _servant_ , and to achieve that he needs Maul isolated and controlled. Unfortunately for him, that’s made something as simple as companionship the most tempting of forbidden fruits. 

Maul hesitates in the empty hallway. His saber, he knows, is one way, but he can sense the apprentice from the ship somewhere in the opposite direction, and the urge to corner the man and, and— what? brag at him? show him the utter uselessness of holding cells in containing Sith Lords? ask him what in all the stars the Jedi are planning to do? challenge him to a duel? pull his stupid braid until he snaps? steal him away and show him all the powers of the Dark? None of those options quite encompass it, because for all that he wants it Maul doesn’t quite grasp company or conversation as an end in and of itself. He pulls himself together a bit too late and turns in the _correct_ direction, only to within a span of minutes very nearly walk into Master Nu. 

Jocasta Nu, like many Force-sensitives including Darth Sidious and rather importantly _excluding_ Maul, is very good at hiding her presence. She is also not quite as naive as Maul takes her to be, because she knows all too well the corrupting nature of the Dark Side. She sincerely pities Maul as a living thing, because he is young and he is scared and he is in pain, but pity hardly blinds her to his true nature and certainly doesn’t stop her from sensing him from three floors away. His presence in the Force is loud and furious and even his shock at the sight of her comes through as a silent shout. 

“Ah, I see you’ve come to return my books,” she says, with the absolute practiced calm of a librarian who happens to also be a Jedi. “You didn’t have to do that. I was going to come check on you.” Maul doesn’t gawk, he’s too well-trained, but he does scramble for an explanation rather visibly. 

“You—um—you’re old, I didn’t want you to have to go up and down stairs.” Master Nu chuckles, because for a moment Maul really does sound like a padawan caught in the middle of doing something stupid.

“I appreciate the concern for my health,” she replies, deadpan, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to brave the stairs regardless. You’re not meant to be wandering.” She raises a hand to physically turn him, since monster or not he clearly does defer when pushed properly, but Maul recoils with a hiss like a frightened animal. This is because he can’t really parse the difference between Nu’s practiced calmness and his master’s genuine cold indifference—both techniques are quite similar, it’s true, as they are based on the same fundamental lesson of Force-use, and they both give the appearance of deep, still water in which the unwary could drown. There are different sorts of deep water, though, and Nu’s is the sort that teems with life, so she withdraws her hand and smiles gently instead. “Is there something else you’d like to read about? I’m afraid that’s all I have regarding your homeworld.”

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan find them forty minutes later in the Archives, with Maul curiously scrolling through a technical analysis of pros and cons of various lightsaber crystals under Master Nu’s watchful eye. Qui-Gon, quite reasonably, is relieved to find the prison break so neatly foiled, but Obi-Wan knows the Master Archivist has chased many an allegedly proper and confirmed Jedi from her domain, so he casts a curious eye over Maul and _wonders_.)

————

Qui-Gon doesn’t dislike Master Nu, particularly. She’s intelligent, wise, certainly, and approaches the Force with the practicality of an academic rather than a monk or a sorcerer or a military leader, and she had almost certainly given Qui-Gon’s youthful exploits more leeway than other masters had. She just comes, inevitably, with a slew of painful memories which Qui-Gon would prefer not to deal with at all. Death may be inevitable and the dead may be one with the Force, but no amount of platitudes and meditation and understanding changed the fact that losing someone is, well, a loss, and for all that he accepts death Qui-Gon still sometimes sees Tahl out of the corner of his eye, or in busy streets, or in his dreams. Or, for instance, the corners of the Archives where she had planned to work just as soon as that last field assignment was put to rest, or just behind her old mentor’s desk—

He smiles politely at Master Nu and lets the false vision drift past him. He can’t help seeing it, but he can refrain from dwelling on it when there are more immediate things at stake. 

“I see you’ve found our escapee,” he says mildly. The Sith apprentices tenses and tightens his grip on his datapad. (They make decent projectiles, in a pinch, and Qui-Gon is somehow a lot less imposing than the archivist. He’s also a larger target.) Master Nu smiles politely back. 

“Hardly an escapee,” she says. “And hardly a difficult task to find someone who is looking for you.” 

“I wasn’t,” Maul mutters. In the quiet of the Archive, it’s very audible. Master Nu raises her eyebrows and smirks, but her back is to the Sith and neither her tone nor her presence shows any signs of mockery. It’s a rare talent, that sort of placidity, and Qui-Gon thinks she has used it against half the Temple at various points. 

“Oh? Is Master Jinn not to know that you wanted to do an old woman a favor?” she asks. Maul opens his mouth, shuts it again, and makes a low noise of frustration before making a show of putting his full attention to his reading. Master Nu’s smirk grows. “Very well. Now, Master Jinn, what is it you wanted from me? Something clearly weighs on your mind.”

“More than one thing,” Qui-Gon admits, and the archivist’s expression softens. (The same way we don’t expect to see our teachers outside of classrooms, Qui-Gon on some level believes Jocasta Nu stepped out of the Living Force a fully-formed, grey-haired archivist with strong opinions about shelving systems. That’s not true, of course-—she’d been a padawan too, once upon a time, and even a youngling in the Temple creche. Under the mirror-flat water surface, she worries and mourns and remembers stargazing with a very young Sifo-Dyas and learning to ballroom dance in a storage room with Yan Dooku. Those days are long past, and the memories flow without leaving a mark.)

“Some are more pressing than others,” Obi-Wan prompts. (Were he a bit older, a bit more assured of his knighthood, he’d have said something sharper—perhaps about the sudden abundance of Sith Lords plaguing the galaxy. For now he holds his tongue partway out of wariness and partway because he’ll always feel around sixteen in Qui-Gon’s presence through no fault of anyone’s.) He’s quite right, anyway, so Qui-Gon sets aside the vague urge to keep the holocron in his pocket and figure it out himself and _not let anyone else ever lay a hand on it_ —sets that _aside_ and shows the thing to Master Nu.

“I received an odd gift today,” he says by means of explanation. “From a self-proclaimed Sith Lord.” Maul sets the datapad down audibly. A ripple passes through Master Nu’s projected calm. (She’ll chastize herself for that later, because her reaction is fascination rather than disgust. Sith Lords, for all that they try not to be, are transient creatures, but repositories of ancient knowledge can live forever in the right hands. She knows the Dark Side is a corrupting thing, she does, but the knowledge the ancient libraries and temples of the Sith were destroyed festers like a wound. It was for the good, it was for the good, but surely there’s a difference between _using_ the Dark Side and simply _knowing_ it. After all, _she_ hadn’t gone mad, and neither had Yan—right?) Qui-Gon blinks and the ripple is gone. 

“Self-proclaimed, that’s new,” Master Nu says. “Why don’t you tell me about it? Perhaps some collaborative input could prove...enlightening.”

It does not prove as enlightening as Qui-Gon had hoped. The holocron doesn’t open at his hand or at Master Nu’s, and when Obi-Wan picks it up and stares at it closely it does nothing with enough vehemence to make Maul hide a smirk on the other end of the table. Of course, it doesn’t open for the Sith apprentice either, which seems like roughly the right moment to put it back in its box. 

“He said it was a puzzle to expand the mind,” Qui-Gon says with a shrug. “I suppose our minds are too narrow for that.”

“All the better, then,” says Obi-Wan. He seems glad to see the last of the thing. (He _is_ glad to see the black box close on the holocron. Unlike the two masters, all Obi-Wan can feel for the thing and its former owner is visceral disgust. The promise of dark and forbidden knowledge feels more like a threat, and it worries him that his master— _former_ master and the archivist are so willing to welcome it.) “It’s a trap—he means to try to _turn_ us.” 

“He meant to _warn_ us,” Qui-Gon says immediately. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so quick to jump to Damask’s defense, but there had indeed been a warning somewhere in the old Sith Lord’s rambling, and Damask is, after all, dead, and his murderous apprentice is not. (There’s that mercy again, the one Damask was so willing to take advantage of. Darth Plagueis was by all rights an enemy of the Jedi, but Hego Damask was an old man with a respirator who was killed by the Sith and it’s the latter identity that sticks in Qui-Gon’s mind. Plagueis, after all, was a clever creature and a master of the game.) “Sidious is the real danger—”

“One we already know about,” Obi-Wan interjects with an annoyed gesture in Maul’s direction. “If he meant to arm us against his student he’d have done so, rather than—than— all this!” 

“Perhaps he sees the power of the Dark Side as the most useful weapon,” says Master Nu steadily. “As it may well have been the only weapon he had…”

“Its power would be beyond you anyway,” says Maul. He’s watching them with wary interest. “And my master’s power would be beyond even _that_.” Which is tough talk for someone who can apparently be bullied by an elderly scholar who is about nose-height on him, as far as Qui-Gon is concerned. Obi-Wan’s clearly had enough of this as well, because he takes a moment to center himself and turns to Maul with a blank smile. 

“That’s nice. Do you play dejarik?” The Sith apprentice hesitates, clearly thrown for a loop by the change in topic, then scoffs.

“Of course I do. Better than you do, _Jedi_.” 

“Let’s test that. I’d like to see the more subtle powers of the _Sith_ ,” Obi-Wan replies. (There’s a metaphor in there somewhere about students, masters, and pieces on dejarik boards patterned in light and dark. There’s also, possibly, a metaphor in Obi-Wan roundly trouncing his opponent in three successive games until Maul snarls and throws the board across the room.) 

“To expand the mind, was it?” Master Nu muses. Qui-Gon hums assent. Damask’s manuscript lies on the table between them. It’s an academic treatise on the darker uses of the Force, formal and scientific and stripped of the familiar language of spiritualism, but much of it runs parallel to Qui-Gon’s own studies. (There’s a reason, after all, why Qui-Gon’s own studies were undertaken partly in secret and partly with Dooku’s backing and all in all quite informally.) It’s… interesting. Flawed, of course, but interesting. All the while, Obi-Wan’s warning still rings in the back of his mind like a bell. What did—or does Damask want? What does he think can be wroght from the chaos of his foretold war? The manuscript provides no answer, but lingers on the idea of creating life from the Force itself.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s easy to wonder about the machinations and ultimate goals of the Sith, but it’s far less easy to actually identify them. All Qui-Gon has is guesses and scraps—the IGBC, surely, is in cahoots with the Trade Federation in some way, and Damask had wanted an army for the Republic, and Sidious is someone who can play the Senate, and when that’s all put together it spells war, surely, and politics and abuses of power, but that’s what the Jedi are meant to safeguard against anyway. (And, truth be told, war and politics and abuses of power take place a thousand times over around the galaxy every day. The Sith are not unique in their evil, though they like to think themselves to be. The difference between an emperor and warlord is a matter of scale, and Plagueis has done equal amounts of harm as a Sith Lord and as a banker.)

The things that happen in the weeks following the battle of Naboo are not the sort that impact the galaxy in any grand way. Jedi go on missions and study and pray and train. Padmé Amidala writes a cautious letter to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to tell them she will soon be replaced as queen, but that Chancellor Palpatine is supporting her bid for a student role at the Senate. (She’ll get it, of course, and and quickly become known as the Chancellor’s apprentice, a moniker which amuses Palpatine to no end. It doesn’t strike him until it’s far too late that he’s got a Sith’s own luck with apprentices.) Anakin struggles, somewhat, with Jedi teachings, because calm is difficult and he misses his mother and Master Plo may be a stabilizing presence but stability isn’t a be-all end-all—but at the same time, a child’s struggles aren’t apocalyptic. Obi-Wan tries to get used to a knight’s quarters, empty and silent and lacking even his former master’s houseplants. (He ends up sleeping on Quinlan Vos’s floor for three days like an idiot and only leaves after little Aayla steps on him by mistake.) Maul escapes his cell twice more, and gets caught once more in the Archives and once, fully armed and fast asleep, on the Temple roof. 

Now, Qui-Gon can’t do much about the majority of these things. Padmé, he rather thinks, will do well in the Senate, and perhaps even bring some new light to the institution—and who better to guide her in such an endeavor than a senior official from her own homeworld? Anakin, too, he has no claim on, though Plo Koon insists he and Obi-Wan visit the boy and assist with his training on occasion. (Plo Koon knows better than most how equal parts nonsensical and impossible it may be to completely cut an apprentice off from all they know. The word may be alien to him, but he is an uncle to every initiate he has found and a few he hasn’t and sees no reason to deprive his new padawan of such.) He even can’t offer Obi-Wan his room back, much as he wants to, not now that the boy has been knighted. That’s how he finds himself standing in front of Maul’s cell again, staring down the Sith apprentice who has, once again, slipped his restraints. 

“On the _roof_?” Qui-Gon asks pointedly. Maul stares back at him.

“You would have preferred me to hunt your students? Or escape?” he answers. (The truth is, Maul _wants_ to escape, wants to flee back to his master, but he knows full well the sort of punishment that would await him upon his return. The longer he tarries the worse it will be, and the more he thinks the Jedi may serve as a good shield. Pain may be one of the paths of the Dark Side, but Maul doesn’t particularly like to hurt. His master tells him that is a weakness, but Maul’s not blinded enough by his loyalty to notice the only pain his master draws power from is that of others.)

“Would you prefer to?” Qui-Gon asks, because he rather thinks the answer is no. Maul makes a noncommittal noise and folds his arms over his chest. (He doesn’t hold any particular grudge against the Jedi students, and the knowledge of that bothers him. They aren’t his enemy, if anything they are prisoners of his enemy, surely the better revenge would be to drag them to the dark and turn them against their corrupt master than to kill them—it doesn’t occur to Maul in the slightest that Qui-Gon thinks something similar of him.) Qui-Gon sighs. “Well, where are you planning on going this time?” 

“Out,” says Maul, looking every inch a sulky padawan. Well, Qui-Gon can work with _that_. (He wants, on some level, to save Xanatos, still. If he can drag Maul somewhat out of the dark, then surely there’s still hope for his lost apprentice, surely there’s still some chance of salvation and redemption in the Force. The difference, of course, is that people like Xanatos choose darkness, while others have their choices made for them.)

“Out,” Qui-Gon echoes. Maul scowls at him silently. At least he’s not growling anymore, at least the raging, agonized fury from the desert has dimmed somewhat to a constant background hum of fear and bitterness. “Well, I always think the gardens are a nice place to be, when one wishes to be outdoors. Safer than rooftops, certainly.” The apprentice’s face stays impassive, but there’s a flicker of _something_ in his presence. 

“Why?” (The Jedi, Maul has learned, don’t particularly mind him asking questions. They don’t always answer, but they don’t take the asking as an insult. That’s...new. He’s halfway convinced it’s a trap too, but as far as traps go it’s a pleasant one.)

“The Force flows through all things. Meditating in the presence of the Force in other forms allows one to form a deeper understanding of it,” Qui-Gon recites. It’s some snippet from a long-ago lecture on the Living Force which has stuck with him. Maul clearly doesn’t buy it, so Qui-Gon changes tactics and offers the apprentice a crooked grin. “Also I have always found plants to be pleasing to the eye.” 

“I see,” Maul says. It’s rather clear that he doesn’t. (The gulf of understanding is, well, understandable.) 

“If I let you out, will you accompany me there and spare us all the bother of looking for you?” It’s a very stupid idea, even by Qui-Gon’s own standards of stupid ideas. Maul has tried to kill him twice, there’s no reason to think there won’t be a third. 

“Can I get my lightsaber back?” the Sith apprentice asks, but that seems like a good place to draw the line. To Maul’s credit, he doesn’t argue. 

(Maul can meditate, after a fashion, but gardens with rock fountains and climbing plants and ferns that are bigger than he is and unfamiliar, fluttering, iridescent insects are not optimal places to concentrate on hate. The garden, he thinks, functions as a sort of echo chamber, amplifying the thoughts and presences of those within it and leaving _him_ , at least, with a growing headache. But there is more than one echo here, so he breathes deeply, forces his shoulders slack, and reaches out for the dark presence leaching through the ground like miasma. It welcomes him, comforts him, like a familiar poison comforts an addict.)

They must make a strange sight, Qui-Gon thinks idly and he feels rather than sees the Sith apprentice relax somewhat beside him. The Council, likely, would have a fit, but he can’t help the need to at least try to salvage this lost padawan—not a _padawan_ , exactly, not _his_ padawan, but that was just a matter of chance. In another life, maybe, had someone beaten the Sith to their prey… (That’s idealistic of him. Dathomir is well outside the control of the Republic, and thus out of sight and out of mind for the Jedi. Sidious was a crueller master than the Nightsisters would have been, but that’s a matter of degrees of darkness.) His thoughts drift—the Sith, the Dark Side, the threat of war, all less-than-optimal things to meditate on. Try again—Anakin, the prophecy, an uncertain future and a glowing red holocron, worries where there should be hope. Try _again_ , then—the garden in a different season, Obi-Wan as a child climbing trees with Bant Eerin and shaking leaves and petals into Tahl’s dark curls while Master Dooku demonstrates some elaborate Makashi technique by the fountain, but when the old man raises his head his eyes are Sith-yellow and his lips pull back in a snarl, the saber in his hands flashes from blue to crimson—

Qui-Gon jolts back to reality with a rush of blind terror, only to find himself already on his feet and reeling away from where the vision had stood. He catches himself, tries to catch his breath and calm his hammering heart, put on a calm face because he’s being _stared at_ and he’s probably scaring the younglings who are out enjoying the sunlight. Maul, still sitting cross-legged on the grass, looks up at him with something that would be curiosity if there wasn’t a fundamental malevolence behind it. 

“Is something the matter, _Master_ Jedi?” he asks, almost polite, and Qui-Gon breathes deeply, which does exactly nothing to calm him. The air feels thick with something, but the thought of what slips through his mind like oil. He should have brought his saber, he shouldn’t have come unarmed into the heart of the Temple with a monster, if he could cut the creature down now—those are not his thoughts. He bites down on them. 

“Just a vision. Those can be… startling, if one doesn’t expect them.” His own voice sounds far away, but at least it is steady. Maul’s tattooed face twists into a smirk. 

“If one hasn’t the strength for them, too,” he says. “Are you going to put me back in my cell now?” To be entirely fair, it’s Obi-Wan who winds up clicking the manacles shut on Maul’s wrist and shoving him back into the cell, because Qui-Gon isn’t even out of the garden before he gets word that his old master is awake. 

———————

Dooku, when Qui-Gon stumbles through the door, is sitting up in bed drinking tea. His hands are bandaged and burst blood vessels snake violet over skin that is far paler than Qui-Gon remembers, but there’s a glint in his clear brown eyes that’s been absent for some decades now. (Sifo-Dyas lies unconscious in the next bed, but for the first time in a long time he sleeps soundly.) 

“Qui-Gon, you look atrocious,” Dooku says by means of greeting, but his accent dips from Coruscanti to Serenni and his lips tilt into a familiar crooked smile. Qui-Gon could weep from relief, were Jedi taught to express themselves that way, but they aren’t so instead he sits carefully at the older man’s bedside. 

“You, by contrast, look only mildly electrocuted,” he replies. Dooku huffs, but there is no anger to it. 

“Brat,” he mutters. “Pour yourself some tea, since you insist on imposing upon me during my convalescence.” 

Qui-Gon wants to talk about nothing (much like he wants to meditate in peace in the garden), but he can hardly brag about Obi-Wan’s knighting (“About _time _,” says Dooku, “I like the boy, he deserves his freedom, not your fleas.”) without talking about Maul and Damask and the holocron, and that quickly turns to them comparing notes on all things Sith-adjacent.__

__“A clone army?” Dooku repeats, visibly thrown. “That certainly is...specific. There are other ways to guard the Republic, surely—the Trade Federation hasn’t a monopoly on droids.” Qui-Gon shrugs expressively._ _

__“Damask was a Sith Lord and a banker, I’m sure he benefits—benefitted somehow from specifically clones.” Probably. “It’s the second one I’m worried about. Sidious.” Sidious who murdered his master and haunts the Senate’s halls and has means and secret bases, who has somehow managed to come to his power on Coruscant, directly beneath the noses of the Council rather than on some distant and well-guarded world._ _

__“Yes,” Dooku draws the word out carefully. “The identity of the remaining Sith is the most pressing concern.” He stares through the steam from his teacup as though he can will it into form._ _

__“The Council won’t act without information, but someone must—” Surely he sounds like a padawan again himself in that moment, Qui-Gon thinks. He should be too old for _someone must_ s. Dooku frowns._ _

__“Hang the Council, Qui-Gon. There are some things _people_ can do that Councils cannot.” _ _

__It sounds like a prophecy, Qui-Gon thinks, and tries to forget the nightmare vision he’d seen, and tries to think of freedom rather than smoke and ashes._ _

__———————_ _

__After that, it’s a surprise to no one that Dooku leaves the order. He does it very politely and properly, of course, with a great deal of decorum and statements of regret, but he leaves anyway. When he tries to return his saber, the one with the curved hilt built for duels rather than battlefields, Master Yoda pushes it back into his hands._ _

__“Yours, it is, my student,” he wearily. “Keep it, you shall.”_ _

__“That is almost certainly a bad idea,” says Dooku. He casts too dark a shadow on the floor of the Council’s chambers, and in the too-bright light his pallor is all too evident. “Not to mention a breach of protocol.”_ _

__“Constant and eternal, protocol is no,” Yoda muses. “As a weapon, keep it not, but as a reminder.” Dooku obediently reties the saber to his belt._ _

__“It will always be a weapon,” he says. “Reminder or not.” (He isn’t wrong. Makashi is a form of combat for a more civilized age, but even then it was used to kill and maim. Jedi are taught not to kill in anger, but they are taught how to kill all the same.)_ _

__The farewell he bids Qui-Gon is almost affectionate. There’s a smile and a clearly sincere shoulder pat, even, which is likely his equivalent of a tearful embrace._ _

__“May the Force be with you, Master,” says Qui-Gon for lack of anything else to say. (There’s never a correct thing to say in those moments, is there? Dooku’s been a constant all his life, if not always a welcome one, and though he’ll never admit it Qui-Gon feels his departure like a wound. That’s ordinary enough. The Jedi may frown on attachments, but it’s the way of sentient beings to cling to whatever family they have.) Dooku looks at him askance._ _

__“I’m nobody’s master now,” he says. “Take care of yourself, Qui-Gon.” (They both believe in salvation, they both stake their lives on it, but Qui-Gon thinks it may come through the Living Force and Dooku has run out of faith to have in distant forces. That sort of thing happens sometimes to those who taste despair and the power of the Dark Side and then live to ponder another day.) And then he gives a brief bow and he’s gone. (There are others he’s said goodbye to, of course, and there’s a memento from Jocasta Nu in his pocket and a letter to Sifo-Dyas neatly folded under the man’s pillow. Sometimes our attachments destroy us, and sometimes they’re the only things that keep us sane. It’s a roll of the dice which one will come true.)_ _

__Qui-Gon half wants to follow Dooku out the door, half wants to ask what he thinks he’s doing and drag him back, but neither one’s a viable option so he watches him leave, takes a deep breath, and marches straight into the Council chambers to ask for a new mission. That’s the Jedi way. Yoda looks almost pitying as he books Qui-Gon on the next pointless geological assessment out of the Temple._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were all waiting for Dooku's grand(?) comeback, right?


	8. Chapter 8

The minute Qui-Gon steps foot in the Temple again (after twelve days spent categorizing carnivorous plants and explaining to a mining executive that displacing the locals, even if they weren’t exactly sentient, was a recipe for disaster, and having exactly nothing to do with Sith Lords living or dead) Knight Vos veers around a corner, seizes him by the arm and yells: 

“Master Jinn, you’ve _gotta_ see this!” Last time that had happened had been an incident involving Obi-Wan, then a boy of fourteen, two senior padawans, a lothcat, and an artifact that really should have been kept under lock and key. Qui-Gon hopes this time involves less cleanup and fewer explanations to Master Koth as he lets Vos haul him into one of the common areas. 

“Master!” Obi-Wan materializes from a rather varied crowd huddled around a holoprojector. Vos shoves him forward. 

“Did it start?” he asks. 

“You missed them trying to interview a hutt,” says Obi-Wan. He’s tense, but brimming with a manic sort of excitement. He’s not the only one, either, the room thrums with energy like sparks. 

“Turn it up then,” Vos says with an impatient gesture toward the holoprojector, and someone obliges. The image of a twi’lek newscaster flickers to life above the table shielding her microphone from whirling sand. 

“—be with us momentarily, so please do stay tuned. Once again, this broadcast is coming to you live to Tatooine—”

“I’m _from_ there!” Anakin announces proudly from somewhere in the crowd. 

“What—” Qui-Gon starts to ask, even though he’s got a vague feeling that he knows already. Obi-Wan gestures shush at him. The newscaster glances off-view and smiles brightly. 

“Count Dooku, it seems you were delayed.”

“ _Count_?” someone mumbles, but of course he’s a count now. Jedi can hold neither titles nor land, but Dooku was—and likely is again—the heir to one of the great families of Serenno. When he steps into view he’s almost the same as he’s ever been: the same calm, blank expression, a familiar cloak around his shoulders drawn up against the wind, all the same mannerisms. From a certain point of view, the man is a stranger to all of them, quiet anger flickering about him like electricity and skull-shadows under his eyes. Either way, the room goes silent when he speaks. 

“Our negotiations took… somewhat longer than originally planned,” Dooku says mildly. “Such things are of no great importance, though. I appreciate you taking the time to wait for me.”

“It isn’t everyday nobles call press conferences out here,” says the twi’lek with a rather weary laugh. “Do you have something to um…?” She trails off and offers him the microphone, and Dooku takes it with a brief and polite bow. 

“I apologize for keeping any of you waiting,” he says, speaking into the camera now. “As some may know, I am Yan Dooku, Count of Serenno, former Jedi and citizen of our Galactic Republic. For no small amount of time, certainly the duration of my life, slavery has been deemed illegal by the Republic but allowed to flourish here in the Outer Rim. Having lived so long on Coruscant, I have heard all the excuses for it—the Republic has no army, and its foothold here is limited, and it would be impossible to track every last slaver, and the void left by the any deposed slavers would be filled with ever more criminal enterprises. I have heard it, and I have understood it, but I have never condoned it. Therefore, I ask the Republic to understand that my actions today are those of a private citizen—a man of means and education, true, but a private citizen nonetheless. Upon this drive—” He pulls a small, glinting drive from his sleeve and raises it before the camera. “—upon this drive are the details of every transaction I have undertaken here, and thus the details and locations of every slave-master, slave-trader and intermediary thereof to ply their trade along the Triellus Route. I put it forth as a challenge to the Galactic Senate, and to you, Chancellor Sheev Palpatine. It is easy to speak of seeking change and freedom for the galaxy or to decry crimes that happen so far from you that you could live and die without seeing them. Match your words with actions and meet me on Tatooine with all the powers of Republican law behind you, or make of me and of Serenno a far more dangerous enemy than any pirate or warlord.” He pauses, perhaps for effect and perhaps for breath, and continues in a much calmer tone. “To those whose lives have been deemed of less value, all together, than my family’s treasury, consider yourselves from this day forth free people under the auspices of House Dooku of Serenno. Those who would move against you will answer to me.” The cloak ripples, revealing Dooku’s curved-hilt saber at his waist. “And they’ll find me to be no _peacekeeper_.”

Silence has long fallen over the Jedi listening to this speech. Some are pleased, others are frightened, but the whole room boils with a wild sort of energy. (There is no peace.) Plo Koon sweeps Anakin, who is staring at the holoprojector in starry-eyed amazement, into his arms and holds the boy close. 

“—all of them?” the newscaster asks. 

“I have been taught not to lie,” Dooku replies. “All of them that I have found, yes.” He pauses, hands her back the microphone, then turns away. “Thank you for your time. This is all that I wanted to impose upon you for,” he adds, then steps out of view. The newscaster blinks, shakes her head in visible astonishment, and gathers herself. 

“We recorded that, in case you missed it. Um—certainly something we will be replaying often, again that was Count Dooku of Serenno speaking…” She fades out as someone turns the projector off, and the room seems to exhale as one, dissolving into curious muttering and bickering. 

“Can he do that?” Obi-Wan asks. “Challenge a sitting chancellor like that? I suppose there isn’t a law but…”

“Don’t think it’d stop him if there was,” says Vos. He sounds a bit strangled. “Your grandmaster’s gone _completely_ mental. Er, no offense, Master Jinn, but it’s true.”

————

(Anakin slips away later, because keeping track of a nine-year-old who can, at random and with no conscious action, completely hide his Force presence is a difficult task even there isn’t a small riot in the dining hall, a yelling match in the Council chamber, and some Force-assisted coin tosses over who gets to go on the inevitable mission to Tatooine once the Republic—or the chancellor or the Senate—formulates a response to this. 

None of it feels entirely real, Anakin thinks. Not the Temple, not the unfamiliar new clothes, not Master Plo and not the other Jedi and not the stunning revelation that someone had freed the slaves of Tatooine. In his dream he’d seen himself, older and stronger and in black robes that swept the ground, but the old master Jedi who’d gone and done it was good enough too. Though he isn’t, Anakin corrects himself, a master Jedi anymore. Everyone’d made a fuss over him leaving. 

What a strange thought. Who’d want to stop being a Jedi?

Anyway, he wants to tell _everyone_ that his mom’s free now, that Tatooine is free now, but the problem is everyone already knows. The other apprentices buzz with curiosity and questions, and suddenly people are willing to talk about their homeworlds because both Anakin and the old count, it turns out, are natives of the Outer Rim, but there’s only so much he can say or hear about that before it gets deadly boring. But! Surely there’s one more person who hasn’t heard the news. With that thought in mind, he rushes down three flights of stairs to find the strange prisoner Master Qui-Gon wants to help. The other Jedi say Maul is a Sith Lord, but, well, that doesn’t mean a thing to Anakin. Why should it?

“Hello!” he calls out cheerfully. Maul isn’t in cuffs anymore. Maybe they’re getting over the Sith Lords thing. 

“...Anakin,” he mutters. “What?”

“Did you hear what happened?” Anakin asks. Maul gestures meaningfully at his cell. “Well, I don’t know, maybe someone came down and told you!”

“I don’t think the Jedi like me enough to do that,” is the dry response. 

“Well, I like you,” says Anakin. A flicker of surprise leaves invisible ripples in the air, which would mean a lot more to him if he was older. For now, he has other things on his mind. “My mom’s free!” 

“Oh?” Maul’s understanding of mothers is purely theoretical, and his understanding of freedom is even more limited than that. 

“The old man—the count—he’s on Tatooine—that is, uh, the Jedi you were with on Naboo? He quit—he challenged the chancellor—“ Anakin’s ability to tell the story coherently is lower than he would like. The words come out in an excited jumble even though he’s _thought_ them all in the right order. Try again. “He said he’d freed every slave along Triellus—d’you know where that is? And my mom’s one of them and now she’s free!” He bounces in place and presses his palms against the transparisteel door. Maul sets aside the datapad he’s been fiddling with and leans forward, curious. 

“The _makashi-juur_ challenged your Senate?” he asks. Anakin grins. He may not know the exact translation of the phrase, but he sure has heard the word Makashi thrown around. 

“Maybe there’s gonna be an old man fight!” he blurts. “That’d be funny!” 

“The makashi-juur would win,” says Maul decisively. “Er—Dooku. Dooku would win. Buying out the debts of slaves was part of the challenge?”

“Um, I think so,” Anakin says. He doesn’t like to think of it that way—surely the count had meant to free his people first and set his challenge second, surely the count understood these things, because he’s from the Outer Rim too. “The Jedi say slavery’s illegal here.” 

“I’m sure they do,” says Maul. It’s been bothering Anakin, in the back of his mind, that Master Qui-Gon had only taken him. It’s nice to be important, it’s nice to be special, but aren’t Jedi supposed to stand against injustice? And yet they’d all been surprised… He doesn’t know what to do with the thought, so it just sits and festers.

“He’s helping people. Count Dooku. The—the makashi-jar.” If he says it vehemently enough he’ll believe it, maybe. 

“ _Makashi-juur_ ,” Maul corrects automatically. 

“M’kashi-jur,” Anakin tries, frustrated. “However you say it. He’s _helping_.” Maul tilts his head and watches Anakin closely. 

“Don’t you wonder,” he muses, “what’s in it for him?” 

Of course Anakin wonders, in the back of his mind, but he can’t think of an answer. How could he? For all the buried bitterness in him, he’s not meant for politics or long games. Which is to say, that’s not what he was _created_ for.)

———————

Qui-Gon, of course, is the first person tapped for the mission to Tatooine, because the Council apparently thinks he can and will talk sense into Dooku, or at the very least stop him from physically trying to fight the chancellor in the middle of a Force-forsaken desert. The validity of that belief, in Qui-Gon’s opinion, is rather questionable, but he appreciates the vote of confidence in what Mace describes as “you two’s inherited utter belligerent stubbornness.” 

Chancellor Palpatine, despite his Jedi escort and the presence of half the Judicial Forces, looks to have aged about a decade. He’s also edging close to picking up Valorum’s hand-wringing habit, which may just come with the job. 

“There are limits,” he says with audible exasperation, “to what the Republic can do.”

“You’re still doing _something_ ,” Qui-Gon points out, even though he’s been ordered not to antagonize the politicians. 

“Letting Serenno stage a hostile takeover, even in the Outer Rim, would be encouraging already antagonistic actors towards open war,” Palpatine replies, then smooths the sleeves of his robes. “Though even if we meet Count Dooku’s demands, I worry…” He trails off, but the meaning is clear. 

(Of course, what’s really troubling the chancellor is the thought of an unexpected piece in the game. A rogue Jedi could prove useful to the Sith, but just as easily could prove to be a thorn in his side. It all depends on the ultimate goal that fuels Dooku’s actions, and on that front Sidious doesn’t hold a particularly good hand. Stars above, if any had asked him a month prior, he’d have been willing to swear that Dooku _enjoyed_ being a Jedi. Then again, if someone had asked him a month prior he would be quite confident in Maul’s ability to _kill_ his enemies rather than end up an apparently halfway willing captive. It’s been a supremely annoying couple of weeks, really, almost as if his dearly departed former master was laughing at him from whatever netherrealm claimed the ghosts of failed Sith Lords.)

“That’s what we’re here for, Chancellor,” says Depa Billaba calmly. “A show of force. It is what Dooku asked for, after all, and it may quell any such...murmurings.” Palpatine offers her a brief smile. 

“Let us pray it is enough.”


	9. Chapter 9

Tatooine is not much changed from the last time Qui-Gon’d seen it. No surprise there, really; though the sand itself is in constant motion, the desert remains. What is different, however, is that when they walk into town Dooku is calmly sipping an iced drink while surrounded by a number of disreputable-looking types in various stages of unconsciousness, injury, and being tied up. 

“Got a head start, did you?” Obi-Wan asks, which is the first thing he’s said since they’ve left Coruscant. Dooku raises his drink in a karking toast. 

“I understand there are procedures for you to follow, but in that time some of the locals grew restless,” he says. He looks absolutely smugly pleased with himself. (All present except Qui-Gon realize that he’s making the exact same expression Qui-Gon tends to make when he’s just done something no one approves of but no one can formally censure.)

“The Senate cannot condone acts of violence against galactic citizens,” says Palpatine. Dooku makes an expression approximating performative surprise.

“My dear chancellor, I would never!” he exclaims. Billaba gestures silently at their surroundings with a stern expression. Or, well, an expression that tries to be stern. It’s rather difficult to pull rank on someone who helped teach you swordplay. Dooku meets her stare without a hint of unease. “I’m merely keeping watch—they attacked one another, you see, something about getting double-crossed, and I did want them in one piece for your arrival. I’m sure Miss Skywalker and the others would support my story, if asked.”

Of course they would, Qui-Gon thinks, exasperated. Some of them, though likely not Shmi Skywalker, would swear the sky was purple and that the Revanchist herself had risen up from the shadows to strike down the slavers if Dooku asked, at the moment. 

“What, exactly, do you want,” Palpatine asks in a way that doesn’t sound nearly questioning enough. Dooku flourishes the drive at him. 

“Take this, and make use of the small army you brought here to formally arrest these criminals. Make an example of them. I believe the local phrase is _put your money where your mouth is_.” The phrasing sounds profoundly odd in Dooku’s clipped and formal cadence. “Show all the Republic that we are not so bound by procedure as to allow people to suffer.” 

“And I’m sure your news crews are standing by,” Palpatine guesses. Dooku smiles coldly.

“Have you a better idea for spreading the word?” There is a moment of silence, and then Palpatine extends his hand to take the drive. Dooku hands it over (without fear, because he has at least three other copies, one of which is tucked in his boot, another of which is in the care of Miss Skywalker, and the third of which is currently being uploaded onto the Holonet by the twi’lek newscaster’s assistant), then steps back. “If I may offer a preliminary suggestion, start with the vermin that surrounds us.”

———————

Dooku’s made their job as easy as it can be, but it’s still difficult. Some resist, some flee, some try to bargain. Qui-Gon feels uncomfortably like an enforcer, but the Jedi are a force for justice and there is not one among them who can, really, condemn Dooku’s plan. 

“I did briefly wonder,” Dooku confesses, as a particularly uncooperative hutt is formally arrested for trafficking in sentients and trying to bribe an official with Spice, “whether you would take my actions as an attempted coup. They were not meant that way.”

“No, they were just framed that way to force the Senate’s hand,” Qui-Gon says dryly. “Smoke and mirrors.”

“I have learned that in politics, it is perception that matters,” Dooku says. “We have the opportunity to place the Republic and the Jedi in a good light, however temporary it may turn out to be. The liberators of the people.”

“And place yourself in a good light, as well,” says Palpatine, who does not sound like a man who has just won a great and public victory over a universally despised foe. (Why should he? Dooku is proving difficult to read, and the last thing Sidious needs is a rogue Jedi with good publicity. He makes an odd sort of champion of the people, to be sure, but were he to capitalize on the burgeoning separatist cause before Sidious himself could take full control of it… No matter. Even Jedi masters can meet with tragic accidents, if needed, and Sidious may soon be in the market for a new apprentice.) Palpatine smiles thinly. “Will you be returning to Serenno? I hear their senator means to retire at the end of the year.”

“Is that so?” Dooku says with curiosity that seems for all the stars genuine. (He’s spent most of his life lying, in various ways about various topics, to a room full of the most powerful Force-sensitives in the galaxy. Not even Sidious can see through that.) “If that is the case, I shall be able to vote for her successor.”

———————

It surprises exactly no one when, two months after what has become known as the Triellus Raid, Yan Dooku wins Serenno’s senate seat as a write-in candidate. Qui-Gon still takes the opportunity to hit his head against the wall when he finds out, and Maul pauses mid-kata to suggest he embrace his anger. 

But, wait, it’s best to back up a little. The machinations and political rise of the last man in the galaxy to hold the title of Count Dooku of Serenno are hardly the only things afoot. 

Shmi Skywalker and an odd assortment of freed slaves have come to Coruscant with the returning Republic fleet. The number isn’t as high as many had feared by a long shot, because many of these people don’t have the overwhelming urge to leave their homeworlds immediately. Shmi is traveling, primarily, to see her son again, because there is no force in the galaxy, capitalized or otherwise, that will keep her from the opportunity no matter who frowns upon it. Everyone on the ship knows it. Qui-Gon is impressed, really, with how well she can carry out the motions of deference—to the Chancellor, to the Jedi, to Dooku—and remain completely unswayed from her goal. He’s aware enough to know he’d be less impressed if he was actually trying to stop her. (He isn’t aware enough to know that she learned this method young and used it on her owners on Tatooine. Anakin had the run of Watto’s shop and a racing career and Shmi had a house with a working kitchen and doors that locked and no one remembered agreeing to any of that.) 

“Do you mean to return to Tatooine after this, Miss Skywalker?” Dooku asks. (He’s a bit more aware than Qui-Gon is, if only because he’s seen the exact same ability backed by the Force a few too many times in Jocasta Nu.) “That is, if you wish to leave that planet, you would be welcome on Serenno. I could arrange a job on my estate.”

“I do mean to return to Tatooine, yes,” says Shmi. “It is the closest to a homeworld I have. You will forgive, I hope, if I have grown tired of being a stranger.” (She has a home with doors that lock and her freedom to lock them, and she knows a man with kind eyes who carries her groceries all the way home from the market just to talk with her once a week, and she is tired of being a pawn too. Her real homeworld had the lush greenery and white-walled ancient buildings that likewise grace Serenno, but she’d trade every memory of green away if it meant she and her son would no longer be pushed around by creatures playing ancient games. It’s not a trade the universe will let her make.) 

“Quite understandable,” says Dooku with a polite smile. It is the lot of Jedi to always be strangers, after all, even those who renounce the Order. 

Anakin flings himself down two flights of stairs to hug his mother when he sees her, and when he’s done showering her with affection he hugs Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Dooku, and then realizes Plo has descended the stairs as well (albeit in a less dramatic manner) and hugs him too. The joy rolls off him in waves, some unbridled and uncontrolled thing like a supernova. It nearly burns, and for the first time Qui-Gon grasps, on some level, why the Council was worried about Anakin. Then Plo sets a gentle hand on the boy’s head, introduces himself to Shmi, and suggests they all must be hungry after their journey and the supernova fades to something more ordinary. 

(There’s the problem, of course, and it’s unrelated to Anakin’s age or willingness to learn. A being as attuned to the Force as him is incapable of feeling in half-measures, incapable of separating himself from his emotions and from those at whom his emotions are directed and from the galaxy as a living shining thing. There is great potential for empathy in that, but just as great a potential for selfishness. For now, though, he’s just a child, and with the approval of his teachers he gives his mother an excited and garbled tour of the bits of the Temple outsiders are allowed in.) 

Maul is practicing his katas in the training halls, because despite some effort on all sides his recent escape attempts have involved very little attempted escape and minimal amounts of violence. After a certain point, keeping him locked up seems like more trouble than it’s worth, though they do seal his cell door at night. There isn’t a standard protocol for stray Sith, after all, though Qui-Gon is more sure with each day that Maul isn’t the first of his kind to find shelter within the Temple’s walls, and prior instances had been (much like this one would be) swept under the rug. 

Qui-Gon supervises, because Maul’s presence is his fault. (Or, well, he supervises as best he can. He isn’t there when Maul prowls the kitchens in the early morning hours, first terrifying those apprentices and initiates sneaking in for ill-timed snacks and later, once a common goal has been communicated by a particularly brave initiate, standing watch in return for a share of the loot. He isn’t there, too, when Master Nu catches Maul wandering the Archives for the sixth time and blandly asks him to help her reshelve, nor when she offers Maul a deal: he’s welcome to linger and read all he likes, but he must leave the Archives better organized than he found them. He isn’t there for growled threats or for Maul trying to break into the holocron vault, and he certainly misses the growing collection of impromptu weapons under the thin pillow in Maul’s cell. Qui-Gon is there, though, in time to catch Maul balancing precariously on the ceiling beams of the training halls with a bo staff, waiting to get the drop on a handful of young knights who were currently cheering Tachi for being able to lift her own bodyweight. As soon as they move away from the weights…

Obi-Wan catches his former master’s eye and makes a show of looking everywhere except up. He’s clearly noticed the ambush, despite Maul managing to fade mostly into the hall’s background noise. This may have something to do with the fact that for the duration of Qui-Gon’s last mission, Obi-Wan had been stuck with what Eerin termed _babysithing_ duty. He’s also perfectly willing to let it play out, which may have something to do with the fact that Maul seems less angry and more something akin to _playful_ , for once. 

Anyway, Vos claps Tachi on the back and the group moves into range, chatting and laughing, and Maul drops from the ceiling in a sudden burst of movement and dark energy. Someone screams, though later on no one is willing to confess, and the ensuing scuffle only ends when Maul is disarmed and pinned to a weight bench with his own staff against his chest. 

“Yield,” says Obi-Wan with all the pomp and drama of a gentleman duelist. 

“Fine,” is the growled response. “But I will get you next time.” But there’s no venom behind his words, and when Obi-Wan withdraws the staff Maul just sits up with his knees to his chest and watches. 

“Keep telling yourself that,” says Obi-Wan with a smirk. “And maybe try catching me alone next time.” Maul makes a derisive noise.

“I’d rather give you a fighting chance,” he replies. 

This is one of the better days. Maul’s mental state and willingness to cooperate fluctuate wildly and follow no schedule understood by sentient beings, not even himself, and some days he wants to tear Obi-Wan’s throat out and rain havoc upon the Temple and some days he wants to watch the Jedi break and fall, to see Qui-Gon burn the same red as the Sith holocron, but there are better days when he sees teachers and peers instead of enemies. The fact that there are good days at all is a sign that Sidious’s experiment is an abject failure. We may be the products of our circumstances, yes, but every monster at some point chooses to be monstrous. 

This is also what leads to Maul practicing his katas, fluid and graceful like a dancer rather than the predator he’s supposed to, under Qui-Gon’s watchful eye when the temple-wide comm alert goes out that Dooku’s won himself a Senate seat.)

“I’m not angry,” says Qui-Gon. “I’m frustrated.”

“Because people are very foolish sometimes?” Maul suggests in a tone that implies he’s heard that answer quite often recently. 

“Especially people who aren’t supposed to be,” Qui-Gon agrees. (It isn’t fair in the slightest to always expect those around you to be the sensible ones, but Qui-Gon isn’t quite fair in his approach to life.) “I’m worried, too,” he adds after a moment, because that’s the partial root of the frustration. Maul tilts his head.

“The makashi-juur can defend himself,” he says, but he really rather misses the point.

————————

Qui-Gon manages to corner Dooku on his first night back on Coruscant, and is fundamentally annoyed by how pleased the old man seems with himself. 

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Qui-Gon hisses at him over a nice corner table at one of Dooku’s prefered tea houses. 

“Enjoying a splendid cup of white karicha,” Dooku deadpans. “More broadly? I’m doing what the Council won’t. If the Sith mean to take the Senate, I will at least be in a position to catch them.”

“We do not go Sith-hunting alone,” Qui-Gon says in exasperation. “You are putting yourself in very real danger—” 

“You will note I was permitted to retain my lightsaber,” Dooku replies evenly. (Lightsabers do nothing to prevent a fall into the Dark Side.) “And on Coruscant, an ally of the Temple is never alone. I should hope you will back me up, if such a thing is required.”

“Of course,” says Qui-Gon. “I simple have—”

“Spare me your bad feelings,” says Dooku. “They won’t save either of us.” It is a grim sort of perspective.


	10. Chapter 10

(The Jedi Temple is meant to be a sanctuary, and it is one in several ways. Firstly and most obviously, its denizens are protected by the Jedi themselves. At any given point, there can be upwards of a hundred fully trained knights and masters keeping a watchful eye on their home. Which ones are there change, of course, but the presence is a constant one, and few darker things can breach a battalion of lightsabers. Second, and obvious to those with a clear understanding of the Force, the Temple has stood for millennia and its guardians have trod the same paths every day of its existence. There are echoes in the paths now, memories and ghosts and the lingering effects of promises. If you sit quietly and listen closely, you will nearly hear them whispering— _you are safe here, nothing will pass me, never again will you suffer as you have suffered, here there is sanctuary and love and I will not allow it to be profaned._ Though darkness leaches through the very soil beneath, and though it may rail and rise with towering force without, agents of the Dark Side cannot pass the gates of the Temple, not for all that they live and ghosts are long dead. 

There are ways around this, of course, because the Jedi Temple has been breached many a time in its long history. An enemy from within cannot be stopped by such protections, nor can one who was invited to enter, for instance—Xanatos wrought discord, panic, and bloodshed quite within recent memory before he was banished, and Maul wakes from nightmare-memories to the soothing almost-whispers of the very ghosts that would, under other circumstances, drive him away. A less Force-sensitive enemy, too, is less likely to draw attention, though just as likely to trip the more conventional security system the Temple has set in place. That’s the third protection: droids and sensors and computers to make up the gaps and see what guards and Force visions miss. Like any system of its kind, it isn’t impenetrable, but it is something that must be accounted for. 

The fourth protection raised by the Jedi Temple is not one that springs to mind so easily, because it is not a mystical thing. That’s alright. Not all things in the universe are mystical and spiritual—dark lords can choke to death on fishbones and sometimes dashing princes get engine trouble and there’s the occasional tale of master criminals being caught for tax evasion. In this case, the line of defense is six different forms that need to be filled out and filed independently and in a specific order and in the right place in order for an outsider to acquire a day pass to the Temple grounds without risking the ire of Jedi past and present or setting off any alarms. This is a bureaucratic nightmare that requires signatures of people who are inevitably on the other end of the galaxy and involves lost and mid-filed documents with alarming regularity. 

If one is, say, a Sith Lord in the guise of a powerful politician seeking access to the Temple in order to reacquire and/or silence one’s wayward apprentice while drawing minimal attention and not revealing one’s true identity, the flimsiwork route is the only one available. Everything has to at least appear to be above board, after all. 

“Yes, I understand that he’s in the Outer Rim,” says the chancellor through gritted teeth. His gentle demeanor is in danger of slipping, so he bites his tongue and tries to picture something calming. Maybe the mental image of the hapless padawan obstructing him frying in lightning would do the trick. “What I don’t understand is why no one else can sign off on a day pass, dear child.” Just because one or two Jedi masters are off cleaning up the mess that was Dooku’s rise to political power surely doesn’t mean they all are busy. 

“Well, um,” the Nautolan boy waffles uncomfortably. This is the chancellor, after all, and he’s all of fourteen and relegated to flimsiwork duty for complaining about flimsiwork duty. “It’s not, well, wholly proper.”

“I understand that,” says the chancellor. Are Nautolans considered edible by any major species? That is the sort of question Plagueis would have had a ten minute monologue of an answer to, most likely. Probably. Most species have some sorts of predators. “But the Council does actually know me. Are you sure you couldn’t ask Master Yoda…?”

“Well, um,” the boy fidgets. “You see, sir, I tried the first time you asked.”

“And…?”

“Master Yoda—the Council—well, they don’t think it’s entirely safe right now, do they?”

“Do they?” By all the stars, he hates children. He’d hated them even when he’d been one himself, really, and age has not softened his view. 

“On account of, well, the prisoner,” says the boy in a low voice. “He may be dangerous, they have to keep him guarded. So, well, Master Yoda says no visitors, not even you.”

Emperors bow to no bureaucracy, but chancellors are bound by them. Sidious rages internally, but manages to keep up the polite mask—only just. 

“I see. And yet a padawan’s mother was allowed in…?” he points out. The boy squirms.

“Well, only for a little while—and she didn’t really go anywhere—and Master—um, Count—um, Senator Dooku said it’d be okay since he was there, and, well, you wanted a pass that includes the Archives and that’s a bit more risky than the canteen.” An idea clearly enters the boy’s mind. “Say, chancellor, if Master—if Dooku’s a senator now, maybe you could ask him to tell the Council!”

Dooku, again. Everywhere he turns, it’s Yan karking Dooku nowadays, up to his elbows in whatever problem is vexing Sidious today. The man clearly wants attention, and now he has it. Would he better serve the Sith corrupted or dead? Sidious rather likes both options. It’s a matter of picking the right order and the right approach.)

——————

“You have to do something,” says Master Koth to Qui-Gon with the air of a student selected to present a group project despite a fear of public speaking, “about _your_ Sith.” (He has, in fact, been ordered to pass this message along to Qui-Gon on behalf of the Council, and he does, in fact, think literally anyone else ought to be doing it.) 

“He isn’t my Sith,” says Qui-Gon immediately, which is both missing the point and ignoring the fact that Maul’s currently trying to meditate with Qui-Gon’s cloak draped over his horned head. He’s getting better at sitting quietly and calmly, so Qui-Gon thinks the cloak is a fair way to split the difference between sitting with him (and likely getting barraged with dark visions) and just leaving him there (which seems a bit cruel). Koth exhales sharply.

“I don’t care whose he is, Master Jinn. We can’t keep him here.” What he means is that Jedi have their duty, of course, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan both have things to do that don’t involve chasing Maul around the Temple and making sure he stays out of trouble. These things tend to involve report-writing, which for the past twelve years has been purely Obi-Wan’s purview, so Qui-Gon briefly considers arguing the point. Briefly. He is a Jedi, after all, and temptations pass like waves in water. 

“I could… take him along?” he suggests, because bringing a—bringing any being with Maul’s temperament, really, on a diplomatic mission is idiotic, and Qui-Gon’s missions run primarily diplomatic. Koth shrugs. (If they get the Sith out of the Temple, he’ll no longer get pulled into the bureaucratic back-and-forth that is Chancellor Palpatine’s ill-timed attempt to get a new day pass. That’s a selling point for him—let the politician have his pass and stop bothering them.)

“Not my problem. I’m not the one who brought him here.” Koth hesitates just a moment, then. (He almost understands, after all, he understands mercy and the sometimes foolish urge to save _everyone_. The Jedi value compassion, weakness that it often may be. And Koth is a zabrak too—if he forgets himself, he can see something almost familiar in the cast of Maul’s face or the strange crown of horns, he can almost imagine the young man to be a cousin, not an enemy. Such momentary thoughts pass quickly.) “Do try not to get yourself killed, Jinn.”

“I haven’t died yet,” says Qui-Gon, because really, what is he supposed to say to that?

——————————————

He doesn’t exactly get the Council’s blessing to drag Maul along to Kesmere Minor as much as he gets the Council’s exasperated sigh and general waving-off. (Several councilmembers had hoped his training Obi-Wan would put a stop to what had been loosely termed Jinn Incidents. Instead, it has led to the creation of Jinn-And-Kenobi Incidents and the rare but ultimately even more exasperating Kenobi-We-Expected-Better-Of-You Incidents. Jinn Incidents, as ought to be quite evident, persisted regardless. There is a log of them all in the Archive, a fact of which Qui-Gon is blissfully unaware and in which Obi-Wan takes a slightly demented pride.) 

“You’re taking me _with you_?” Maul asks. Genuine confusion has leaked into his voice. “Why? Do you expect to need someone killed?”

“I certainly hope not,” says Qui-Gon, even though it’s always an unpleasant possibility. Despite his best efforts, not everything can be solved with bargains and credits and mind tricks and loaded dice. (If Qui-Gon were hairsbreadth closer to the Dark Side, he would say with an exasperated sigh that it is a pity so many creatures refuse to acknowledge the fundamental superiority of his position and reasoning. As is, the thought doesn’t quite coalesce into words.) 

“ _Hope_ ,” Maul scoffs. It does little to hide his discomfort. “Why do you need me along?”

“I _want_ you along,” says Qui-Gon. “For company. I’ve gotten so used to having Obi-Wan along, but he’s supposed to do his own work now.” It’s not quite a lie, from a certain point of view, and not-quite-lies fall easily from Qui-Gon’s tongue. Maul stares at him warily (much more used to not-quite-truths, really, though both are weapons when wielded by masters) then visibly decides to pick a better priority. 

“Can I get my lightsaber back, then?” he asks. 

“If you play nicely,” says Qui-Gon, who absolutely should just say no. (But that’s a foregone conclusion, isn’t it?) Maul folds his arms and huffs. 

—————

They get intercepted by pirates 80 percent of the way to Kesmere Minor. (Of course they do. Unrest and crime have plagued the Outer Rim for generations. Warlords have risen and fallen outside the notice of the Republic and petty wars have been fought and lost. Plagueis and Sidious have aggravated it with their machinations, and upset that was the Triellus Raid hasn’t helped, but it would have been much the same without them. Chaos ebbs and flows like tides, and the Sith have merely taken advantage of a rising wave. It’s of little importance whether or not these pirates have a legitimate grievance against the Republic or whether they know their current target is a Jedi. In this case, their grievance is valid—Kalee isn’t the first or the last world to have fallen to invaders backed by the Republic, and it’s difficult to think of the alleged greater good of the galaxy if your people are dying and your home is being destroyed. It is also difficult to claim to be avenging your fallen if you are preying only on the weak; these pirates target merchant vessels in passing through the rim, primarily, and disregard that many of these ships are bound for the very same ravaged worlds the pirates may wish avenged, bringing much-needed food and supplies. Then again, many of those same ships and supplies, vital as they are to any rebuilding efforts, are bankrolled by the IGBC and Damask Holdings. Things are never all that simple, you see.) 

They get intercepted by pirates, and Qui-Gon learns that attempting to negotiate one’s release goes a bit differently when one is physically holding back a murder-happy red-and-black-tattooed horned menace at the same time. It’s not something he’s considered before, though it does add a certain flavor to the situation. (He’s human, and so is Dooku, and so were all three of his apprentices, and Tahl was near enough to seem it if she wore goggles. Of course he isn’t used to this. The pirates see him dragging back a nightbrother half his size and wonder, briefly, if they have caught a slaver instead of an ordinary merchant. When they recoil, it’s both from Maul’s snarling fury and from the thought of what sort of defenses a man who can afford to buy a nightbrother may have lying around. Dathomiri slaves don’t come cheap.) Once he’s moderately sure Maul won’t try to tear anyone’s throat out with his bare (er, gloved) hands, Qui-Gon turns to the pirates with his most bland smile and suggests they talk this whole boarding incident over like civilized beings. 

“I don’t believe we’re enemies, after all,” he adds. It would be easy, so easy, to back his words up with a push from the Force, to make them see reason against their own will. He doesn’t do it, of course, because he’s a Jedi and he has to try the proper approach first. (And if he doesn’t try all that hard on the proper approach, knowing he has something far better to fall back on, so what? He tries it, that’s what matters.) After that, well, some people may find jumping straight to mind trick unbecoming, but some masters said the same things about, say, a given style of lightsaber training, or the use of hyperdrives (really!), or the sort of boots young people wore nowadays. Unbecoming, in Qui-Gon’s view, was perfectly fine. (There is a Sith holocron in Qui-Gon’s pocket, and its presence is unbecoming too. Leaving it with Master Nu was the right thing to do, likely, but it had been addressed to him. It’s his. He’ll keep it until he solves it.) 

“Dunno about _that_ ,” snaps one of the pirates, cocking his blaster. His fellows follow suit. “How about you show us what’s on board, we see if we’re friends then.” Maul’s fingers twitch and he shoots Qui-Gon a look that is rather akin to a kriffing akk dog waiting to be loosed. That’s jarring too. For all that Obi-Wan’s frustrations were occasionally palpable and for all that Xanatos had—for all Xanatos’s wickedness, they’d pleaded and argued and gone against instructions and fumed quietly and never quite left Qui-Gon feeling like he was holding a leash. Qui-Gon shakes his head briefly and hopes the no registers. 

“ _There is no need for violence_ ,” he says, and gestures the slightest push of the Force towards the pirates. They waver. One, a kaleesh with a cut-up face, clutches her weapon tighter and hisses something low and crackling. (Were Obi-Wan there, he’d translate the kaleesh word for butcher, though he wouldn’t know offhand that it’s become a synonym for Jedi. The last time this pirate had seen a Jedi, she’d been a soldier under General jai Sheelal, watching an off-worlder with a lightsaber cut a swath through her people on behalf of their invaders. The general has since bartered his life to the IGBC for the salvation of Kalee, but as far as the pirate is concerned his sacrifice is in vain. The gods of Kalee have fallen, and its children scatter like dust. Maul doesn’t speak Kaleesh, but he can make a guess from the despair and venom in the pirate’s voice.) 

“We’re not bein’ violent yet,” says another pirate. Qui-Gon nods encouragingly at him. 

“ _There is no need for violence_ ,” he repeats, pushing harder. “ _Lower your weapons_.” Two of the pirates obey, the rest seem about to, and the kaleesh woman sways on the spot, then jerks her blaster up and fires point-blank at Qui-Gon’s head. (It’s not that she’s particularly strong-minded as much as that Qui-Gon’s mind trick was trying to push its way through a memory dark enough to haunt her nightmares years onwards. She doesn’t even know if she’s shooting him, exactly, or the butcher of her homeworld. Minds are fragile things, and fear and despair make powerful motivators.) 

She’s close, too close, and Qui-Gon barely has time to inhale and dodge back—certainly not enough time to go for the saber at his waist, though the green blade flashes through the air in front of him and sends the blaster shot wide. (It burns a hole through a box of rations.) It’s enough to break his concentration and the power of the command, and when he quickly regains his footing the situation is quite changed. Namely, Maul has managed to grab Qui-Gon’s saber clean off of him and is now facing down the pirates with a hungry look in his yellow eyes, while the pirates themselves are suddenly anything but cooperative and the kaleesh woman shrinks back in visible fear.

“There is no need for violence from _anyone_ ,” says Qui-Gon, who wants to push at the contents of Maul’s mind somewhat less than he wants to stick his entire upper body into a carnivorous plant again. Hopefully an authoritative tone will work wonders here again. “Maul, give me that.” Maul shoots him a look of pure exasperation. 

“Do you think that will make them less likely to shoot you in the head, _Master Jedi_?” he asks. 

“Ideally, no one will shoot anyone,” Qui-Gon says firmly. “Since _we don’t have anything worth stealing_ , and just need to get to Kesmere Minor.” 

“You… don’t have anything worth stealing?” repeats one of the pirates dubiously. The kaleesh edges away from him. 

“That’s right,” Qui-Gon says. “It’s just me and my student here. We don’t even wear jewelry.” 

“Student?” the kaleesh asks, her terrified gaze flickering between the two of them. Maul picks that moment to huffily hand over the lightsaber. 

“Temporarily,” he corrects. “I’m not a _saf’ayik_.” (A butcher and an assassin he may be, but not in the sense she’s thinking, at least. The Sith have never had a quarrel with Kalee, and in bygone years had taken students from its deserts to train in long-destroyed academies on Korriban or Dathomir.)

“What are you, then?” she asks. 

“Not someone who answers questions at blaster-point,” says Maul. “Sit and talk, and perhaps Master Jinn will let you leave amicably.” And _that_ works, rather to Qui-Gon’s surprise. With only minimal further prodding, the pirates actually lower their weapons and answer questions, wary and distrustful as they are. (Maul isn’t stupid. He has been trained to kill and only to kill, but he is a quick learner. The Jedi like words and symbolism, and they like obedience and organization, and they like things solved with minimal blood—though they seem to care little about bruising—and Maul can provide all of that. And out here in the stars, perhaps his master can reach him and provide instructions. Until then, _Master Jinn_ makes a nice shield.)


	11. Chapter 11

The whole affair is troubling. The pirates, once coerced into talking, tell rather a different tale of unrest on Kesmere Minor than Qui-Gon has heard. While the report from the Temple suggests local rabble-rousers are behind the planet’s troubles, the pirates blame a conspiracy of some sort. They seem unable to narrow down a specific villain—the Republic, perhaps, or the IGBC, or the ghost of a politician that the report claims was assassinated some twenty years prior. They have no love for what they call the unionists, of course, but the whole crew swears blind that the unionists are not to blame. 

“They wouldn’t,” says one of the pirates. Her voice is raspy but girlish—odd, too, because Qui-Gon had rather assumed the pirates to be mostly men. “It’s killing—starving people. They wouldn’t want a blockade.” 

“Starve when there is food, not when there isn’t,” suggests the kaleesh woman. “That way it’s a choice, not a death.”

“Reasonable,” says Maul. “But it isn’t their leaders who starve, is it? Just their people. For the leaders, that would be a simple choice.” He fails to keep a bitter edge from his voice. (Unlike Qui-Gon, Maul knows hunger, and he knows how it feels to sit on his knees and starve while his master feasts. A great many small things dull the edge of his hate for the Jedi, but the fact that they have kept him from neither food nor books is one of them. He rationalizes, of course—the children in the kitchens and the little apprentice Anakin are as much the captives of the Jedi as he is, surely, and Master Nu is as tainted with the darkness as the makashi-juur, even if she shows it more subtly, and Jinn and Kenobi he could certainly kill, surely, _certainly_ , he just needs assurance that his mission hasn’t changed, that’s all, _that’s all, that’s all_.) Qui-Gon tries to reach out with calmness, but the Sith apprentice turns physically away as though the gesture burns him. (Maul’s been thinking too much. He could kill them, surely, but what if he didn’t have to? Wouldn’t his master benefit from an army, from allies, from a Sith order that spans the galaxy like in times of old? The time for hiding, after all, has passed, and the Rule of Two… well. Clearly that was already forsaken, if there had been another Sith Lord around to deliver a crimson holocron to Master Jinn while Maul and his master still lived, right?) 

“Not all leaders are like _human_ leaders,” the girl retorts. She’s… a duros, maybe? Beneath the goggles and the cap and the high-necked coat, it’s hard to tell. Rather far from human, anyway. She turns towards Maul with an almost pleading gesture. “You don’t need to—” And then quickly falls silent, shooting a wary glance at Qui-Gon and retreating to join her companions. It strikes Qui-Gon that she’s likely quite young too. (She is one of many war orphans who do not find salvation in greater causes, and when she looks at Maul she sees a person not unlike herself. She’s a bit over twenty, and in his borrowed padawan robes Maul looks about sixteen. There are no happy stories that end in alien children bowing at the feet of Core Worlds gentlemen who claim to be their teachers, not as far as she knows, and if she didn’t fear the Force she’d ask the boy to claim his freedom and come with her.) 

“Power corrupts all things,” Maul replies evenly. (This is a law of the universe, he knows. Any creature given power over others will abuse it, which is why power must be attained and coveted. So long as you are the strongest one in the room, you will not be the victim. He is not as wrong as he could be, which is a sad testament to the state of the Republic.) “What do they want? Your unionists?”

They want any number of things, apparently—money, power, freedom, the death of some bank official or another who administers their planet’s loans. Maul looks roughly as dubious about their alleged good nature as Qui-Gon feels, though perhaps for different reasons. 

“People do all sorts of things for freedom,” Qui-Gon points out as gently as he can. They do all sorts of things for money and power too, of course, but he’d picked the least questionable motive. (He’s lived in the Temple all his life, he doesn’t know the value of money on a backwater. He doesn’t know that money can buy freedom, buy lives, buy out contracts that can bleed a planet dry. He doesn’t know money can fund roads and schools and hospitals just as much as it can fund armies and bombs. He doesn’t know what happens after a war, not in any real sense, because Jedi win battles and negotiate treaties and move on without attachment, while the rest of the galaxy has to live in it. This may sound like a condemnation, but please understand that it isn’t. The Jedi are what they are for good reason; for every knight or master who forsakes the order to truly do some good, there are two dozen who walk the path to the Dark Side that is paved with good intentions and righteous rage. The tragedy of Darth Revan and Darth Malak is a tragedy on many fronts, and for the Jedi foremost among them is this: they were good people once, and they only wanted to save lives. Is that a familiar tale?) “That’s why I’ve been sent to take a look. We need to…” What he needs to do, according to the Council, is resolve the conflict. What it likely entails is _pacification_ , and looking at his current audience that is really not a word Qui-Gon wants to use. “We need to make sure no one starves. Who set up this up, the IGBC?” 

Roughly half the pirates think it's the bank, the other half swear it’s a different business interest that, as far as Qui-Gon’s slightly haphazard flowcharts would indicate, is also owned by a subsidiary of Damask Holdings. He explains as much and finds the pirates less than surprised.

“They own everything,” says one of them, bitterly. “People, ships, food, planets.”

“Souls,” adds the kaleesh. Another pirate pats her on the shoulder. 

“Aye, that too, if you’ve got em.”

“Damask was—was an evil man,” Qui-Gon begins, then stops. Damask is dead, and even alive it was unlikely he was directly involved here. Better try a different tack. “With him dead, the IGBC’s leadership may be more easily swayed one way or another. We’ll make sure they’re stopped.”

The pirates are, to a one, dubious about that, and Qui-Gon has to stop himself gritting his teeth. Patience is the Jedi way, he reminds himself, and these people have no reason to trust him—no reason to trust the Jedi or the Republic any more than they trust the IGBC. But that’s terribly stupid of them, a distant part of his mind points out. The Jedi aren’t in this for profit, after all.That makes them better. 

———————

(It should come as little surprise that this mission goes poorly.) Qui-Gon expects resistance, but he doesn’t quite expect to have a blaster in his face literally the exact second he opens the ship’s door. Maul makes an exasperated noise behind him, because this is the second time in three hours someone’s gotten them at blaster-point. (Usually, people who point blasters at Maul die, or at least lose a limb, but _Master Jinn_ likes talking so much that he’d smiled and patted Maul on the head once they’d let the pirates go. He’d expected a blow and only barely restrained himself from flinching, and the Jedi’d cut his hand on one of Maul’s sharp horns. Altogether an unsuccessful interaction.) Over the next four hours, Qui-Gon gets taken captive twice more, shot at, threatened with a tortuous death by acid bath, and thrown in a holding cell while his captors try to figure out the monetary value of a Jedi. He also misplaces Maul somewhere between the attempted murder and the second kidnapping, which is another sort of problem that will have to be resolved before he can return to Coruscant. Qui-Gon exhales slowly, shuts his eyes and counts to five, then opens them in time to see his latest captor march in. 

“I hope you sell me at above market value,” Qui-Gon deadpans. Force have mercy, but he misses Obi-Wan. It’s much more fun to have someone to play off of. His captor scowls. 

“What do you want here, Jedi?” he asks. 

“We’ve been told food imports to the planet haven’t been arriving,” says Qui-Gon. “ _You want to explain that to me_.” And so he gets the whole sorry tale yet again, because the man really does want to yammer at someone about it. This time there is a bit more context—a loan taken out by the late politician that the current government can’t pay off, taxes that flow into the coffers of the IGBC, and now private companies, headquartered offworld, refusing to pay wages to citizens until the loan is dealt with. Qui-Gon suggests, polite and calm, that perhaps he’d be more useful were he pointed at the bankers, if they were the root of this particular evil. 

“They won’t move for love or threats,” says his captor. “Just for money.”

“They may move for their master,” Qui-Gon replies. 

——————

The ghost of Hego Damask doesn’t move his former subordinates, but when Qui-Gon bluffs blatantly and claims he has documents linking them to the Naboo crisis they’re suddenly willing to bargain. (They don’t move for love or threats, it’s true, but any proof that the banks are moving against the Republic would grossly diminish their power, and if any other entity was given control of the valuation of credits the IGBC would find itself in dire straits indeed.)

“It’s the matter, of course, of repayment of the loan,” says one of the muuns on the holocomm. The quality is shoddy, but Qui-Gon doubts he’d be able to tell them apart anyway. (He’d be able to pick the girl Marit Chuus out of a crowd, but that’s because to him she’s a girl and a victim first and a muun second.) “We bought out a debt, you see, that the planet owed to the Republic. With the government so in need of funds, this was a preferable setup, but that does not mean the debt was erased altogether.”

“And what do you expect them to pay from?” he asks. The muun shrugs gracefully. 

“Such things are the concern of other organizations, not ours. A payment schedule was agreed to.” 

“Yes, by someone twenty years dead three governments ago.” He should say that evenly, but it comes out snappy. “Perhaps renegotiations are in order,” he tacks on, calmer. The muuns confer, briefly.

“Certainly, Master Jedi. If you can bring representatives of the planetary government to a meeting such as this, we will be pleased to renegotiate terms.”

“Of course,” says Qui-Gon through gritted teeth, because the request is both reasonable and impossible and they all know it. “I’ll be in touch.”

And then he walks out of the holocom to learn someone’s shot the only elected representative the planet has, just to make things simpler. (Murder is difficult to condone, but the representative in question was elected by intimidation and the stuffing of digital ballot-boxes and he has spent his time in office backing the very policies that have led to the present troubles.) For a moment, just a moment, Qui-Gon considers leaving them to it, but then he blinks and the urge is gone. 

“There are ration packs on my ship,” he tells the guards. “Please see to it that they are distributed.” One step at a time, one moment at a time. That’s the Jedi way.

———————

(Maul prowls the outskirts of the industrial town. He has seen many such places—has been sent to sow discord and chaos in many such places at his master’s whims, and finds that they all smell the same. There’s a smell to hunger, desperation, and despair, when you look for it, a deep and sour thing that sinks into the buildings and the streets and clothing and into people’s very skins. They stink of fear, too, and fear is what the Sith take power from, fear is his ally—

Only not here, technically, Maul supposes. All of the other times, he had been sent to give these places the push they needed to fall into darkness, but here someone else must have pushed them—or perhaps the people have done it themselves. And here, unlike in the dozens of other similar places, the Jedi have been sent in to set right the wrongs and… He pauses, frowns. That’s not quite right. The Jedi have been sent, yes, but to put an end to the unrest, not to set anything right. There had been no instructions to placate pirates or to walk into traps with one’s hands up pleading diplomacy, that had all been Master Jinn. The knowledge shouldn’t be frustrating, it should be validating, it should be proof positive of the corruption that Maul has known all along. Instead, a myriad of incorrect thoughts flicker through his mind. 

Why this one, why now? Is destruction and despair only worthy of attention now that they can see the looming shadow of the Sith? And why, here and now, would despair be sealed with the blood of a Jedi? And why _that_ Jedi, why Master Jinn who talks too much and calls Maul his student without batting an eye? Surely there are better Jedi to kill, that little goblin or the tall man with the angry eyes or the togruta with the painted face and the clicking dangling pendants on her montrals. And why the holocron, and why had it gone to Master Jinn? And why had Maul’s master spoken so often of the Rule of Two and never once of another Sith Lord, never once of Damask—or whatever his true name was? And why had the makashi-juur woken clear-eyed and determined after touching darkness, and why had he immediately moved to _help_? And why, and why, and _why_ —

Maul isn’t trained to question why, he is trained to obey and to serve as his master’s weapon. It’s a sign of the failure of Sidious’s teachings, or of the tenacity of Maul’s own mind, that he is still capable of doubt. But he is, and doubt eats at him. 

Why did _Anakin_ get a mother and a gentle master and a love of flying and dreams of the open sky, what has he done to deserve all the things Maul has never dared to want? Why is one industrial planet worth more than another, why is one child from a backwater worth more than another, what right has fate to decide such things seemingly at random? Jealousy can drive Jedi into the waiting embrace of the Dark Side, but Maul has nowhere left to fall. He pulls the cloak — borrowed, brown, still smelling slightly of clean laundry, softer to the touch than something resembling a potato sack has any right to be — tighter around himself and tries to channel his anger at the right target, any target, _through anger you gain power and through power you gain victory and through victory_ —

“Hey, you were with that human, weren’t you?” 

Maul snaps back to reality sharply enough to hurt. The girl addressing him barely comes up to his shoulders and has mottled blue skin under her hood and mask and thick goggles that hide her eyes. Not much point lying, Maul knows he’s recognizable, so he gives her a curt nod. The mask covers her mouth, but he can feel her excitement bubbling beneath it. It’s the wrong emotion for the situation, he thinks. She should be terrified. Fear is his ally. Excitement is...useless. 

“I heard they let him out, heard he's gonna _break_ them offworlders,” she announces. 

“...let him out?” Maul echoes. The girl nods rapidly. 

“He’s a _Jedi_ ,” she says, like it’s a big revelation. “Guess that means he can pull rank on any kind of bosses.” She tilts her head to look more closely at Maul. “Are you a Jedi too? Y’don’t look like you are.” He shakes his head no. The girl seems satisfied with that. “Figured. But I saw you before, so I thought you should know, yknow, ‘bout your friend not being dead.”

“Thank you,” he says carefully. The words still feel foreign on his tongue despite his weeks of practice at the Temple. Less familiar still is the rush of emotion he doesn’t know to name as relief. The girl giggles under her mask. 

“No problem! Figured that’s what you were so cut up about. I’ve heard—“ And then she starts to yammer on. Her words don’t fall on deaf ears as much as bypass them entirely. Relief feels like drowning, so he grabs onto the only life raft he has ever known—wrath. Why does _this one_ live when countless others have died at the hands of rioters and pacifying forces and Sith Lords? What right does she have to breath and laughter and—

He snaps the Force like a vice around her throat and lifts her into the air. Now she’s scared, now things are how they’re supposed to be, here’s proof that this place, this situation is no different from any other. Only, it is, because there is no threat hanging over Maul’s head, no punishment for lingering or talking or letting a victim escape or letting a bounty hunter pierce his ear in the back room of a dingy bar or for stopping to try to wrap his tongue around local words. His master’s presence, constant as it is, feels as far away as it had in the Temple, and Maul doesn’t take particular pleasure in indiscriminate slaughter. He is at ease with it, he thinks it sometimes necessary, sometimes practical, but he takes no pleasure in it like he would in a duel against a powerful enemy. For a long moment he lets the blue girl dangle in the air before him, then he throws her aside, hard enough to bruise but little else, and bolts. 

He’s not running away, he assures himself, and it’s not a show of weakness. It’s simply practicality. The girl is irrelevant, after all, most people are. If anything of importance is to happen here it will happen in the presence of the Jedi, so he has to find Master Jinn. 

It does not cross Maul’s mind that a lot of the irony has seeped from that title of late.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that it's at all relevant, but the young pirate is a neimoidian, not a duros, because cultural norms are one thing but having single-personality-trait species is rather silly ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	12. Chapter 12

Having a goal helps. The IGBC most likely could care less who rules the planet or what form the government takes, so long as there is some sort of formal entity for them to deal with. Coruscant, Qui-Gon knows, cares even less, so long as there are no more rumors of civil unrest to threaten the illusion that the Republic is a benevolent parent to all its—no, that isn’t right. Coruscant doesn’t care as long as peace is restored. Fine. If he can’t get them a senator (and someone’s really made sure the senator is dead), he’ll get them representatives— namely, the leaders of the bickering sects of unionists. His onetime captor is easily swayed and obeys with just the merest push, supplying names and locations and promising to _sit in his control room and not go anywhere_ , so that’s helpful too. (People tend to like the thought of a hero sweeping in and setting things to rights, and Qui-Gon’s former captor and current semi-thrall is no different. He may distrust offworlders, he may, once the effects of the mind trick wear off, distrust the Jedi and their strange magics, but he wants a rescuer just the same. Reality doesn’t work like daydreams, though, and this desire most often leads to the rise of tyrants who promise change just as soon as they seize full control of everything and a loss of faith in reformers who truly do mean to enact change but are stymied by not being tyrants.) 

Qui-Gon is halfway through bartering himself a speeder when Maul materializes at his side, hood up and face impassive. 

“Hope you didn’t get into any trouble,” Qui-Gon says lightly. 

“I didn’t get arrested,” the apprentice mutters in response, shooting Qui-Gon so dubious a look that he thinks he must have been practicing it. “Seem to be doing better than you.” There are any number of snippy reponses or Yoda-worthy koans that could be said to that, but Qui-Gon bites his tongue, smiles, and nods. 

“Good, then. I was worried something had happened to you.” It’s not completely a lie, either, not even half a lie, though Maul happening to someone else was admittedly a more pressing concern. The apprentice folds his arms and scowls, but when Qui-Gon turns his attention back to the speeder — speeders, now they need two — he edges ever so slightly closer. 

————————

So between the two of them they plead, bargain, bribe, threaten, and resort to rather more mind tricks than the Council would approve of to convince another six unionists to get in on the plan. Maul lurks silently for the first two, but by the end is keeping pace with Qui-Gon quite nicely. He’s a quick study, and perhaps Qui-Gon’s deviated far enough from the Jedi Code in this case to not induce too much cognitive dissonance. Whatever the reason, Qui-Gon is pleased with the result. 

“We’ll make a diplomat of you yet,” he half-teases. Maul frowns and checks another name off the list. 

“Threats and mind control are the easy parts of diplomacy,” he answers. “Is this how Jedi do things when no one is watching?”

“Not usually,” Qui-Gon admits. “Desperate times, though.” For some reason that sends a flash of quickly-stymied amusement through Maul’s presence, if not his face. 

“Desperate times,” he agrees, then pauses. “Master Jinn?”

“Yes?” 

“What are you going to do with them when this is over?” Qui-Gon blinks, confused. 

“We’ll go back to Coruscant once this is sorted out,” he non-answers. Maul shakes his head incrementally. 

“Of course you will. But they will still listen to you, won’t they? So, what will you do with them?” (It isn’t meant as a dig. The Jedi like him to ask questions, after all, and Master Jinn seems willing enough to explain things, and he’s curious. How does one force obedience in the long term? Surely his master knows how, but it’s one of the many secrets of the Force Maul hasn’t been trained in, and he wants to fill in the gaps as soon as he can. After all, whatever reason Master Jinn has for keeping him around won’t last forever.) 

“We’ll _leave_ ,” Qui-Gon reiterates. Phrased like that, the situation puts an odd chill in his bones. He doesn’t mean harm, he doesn’t mean tyranny, he doesn’t mean any of the things Maul is being so matter-of-fact about. “We’ll leave and we’ll let them go. What they do without us is their own business.” What they’ll do, suggests a voice in the back of Qui-Gon’s mind, is go right back to how they were before and likely do even more harm. He ignores it. “That’s why it’s important to set up something that will work for a while _without_ intervention.” 

“That sounds… messy.” Maul wrinkles his nose in apparent distaste. 

“People are messy,” Qui-Gon tells him. “The Force is messy, living is messy. It isn’t our duty to try to change that.” (Perhaps unknowingly, he has hit upon a commonality between himself and Maul. They are both attuned to the Living Force far more strongly than is the norm, to the chaotic interconnectedness of the moment, and they have both been taught to try to instill order in it. That never works.)

——————

The next name on the list calls Maul a _pretty thing_ and grabs his chin to have a closer look at him. He punches her through a wall. Oh well, at least her second-in-command is much more willing to listen to Qui-Gon even without mind tricks. The one after that shoots at them and calls Qui-Gon a sorcerer. (It’s a word tinged heavily with the Dark Side, one that implies madness and hunger for power. The ancient Sith had sorcerers, and so do and did dozens of Dark Side cults and organizations. The Jedi have long eschewed focus on the more arcane workings of the Force, which is perhaps a pity. Qui-Gon would have been good at them. So would Obi-Wan.) 

“I’m a Jedi, not a sorcerer,” Qui-Gon corrects calmly. “ _Put away the blaster_.” She refuses. It’s so annoying when they resist, first the pirates, now this one—can’t they see he’s trying to help? “I said, _put away the blaster_ or I will let my student have at you.” Maul looks suitably threatening for the situation. 

“And if I listen, then what?” she snaps. “You’ll make me crawl? Make me bow before the bankers? I know what you’re after, there’s been word!” (Of course there has. Qui-Gon has steamrollered his way through several factions that would not under any circumstances be willing to work together and sent their leaders off to a meeting blank-eyed and slack-faced or looking over their shoulders in terror, not that he sees it that way.)

“Of course not,” Qui-Gon assures her, or tries to. “Believe me, I want to get rid of the bankers, it just has to be done properly and I can’t do that while being shot at. _Put away the blaster and listen to me_!” She pushes back instead (some people have some innate scraps of Force sensitivity that manifest in strange ways) and Qui-Gon’s frustration and exasperation turn to rage that burns the same shade of crimson as the holocron in his pocket. His vision narrows and clouds. (Too much pressure on a mind can break it. A mind trick is supposed to be a nudge, a suggestion, not a full override. Too much power behind it and it treads close to torture.) “I said _put it down_!” he snarls, and it would be so easy to shatter the fragile, untrained shields around her mind and tear through whatever’s beneath until she can _never disobey again_ and—

He comes back to himself in a flash of panic, and his target opens fire again (quite reasonably) and by the time he and Maul stagger back out into the sunlight Qui-Gon has taken two blaster shots to the shoulder (again, the same shoulder, this is getting to be a problem) and a third, glancing, across his face. He’s shaking much too much to hurt, though, and claws off the cloak in an attempt to get rid of the holocron before dropping to his knees, struggling to breathe. He wants desperately to grab for the apprentice-bond he’s so used to, for Obi-Wan’s steady, grounding light, but of course it’s not there and Obi-Wan is worlds away. Fool that he is, he’s at the edge of the galaxy with a Sith holocron and a Sith apprentice and no way to even call for help.

—————

(Maul wonders, not for the first time, about the fragility of these Jedi. They aren’t incapable of power, they can — many of them can — fight properly, they can and often do exert their control over others, and yet it seems as though as soon as they get close to being able to do something, they just crumble. Master Jinn has his back against a wall and seems to be struggling to hold himself upright, and it puts Maul in mind of the makashi-juur on Naboo. That one, too, had reacted to power as if it were poison. It’s… strange. 

They should revel in power, shouldn’t they? They should take pleasure in exercising that which forced the Sith into retreat and hiding a millenium prior, that which secured them the role of guardian of galactic order and stability, that which makes them revered by so many. But the Jedi from Maul’s visions and the Jedi he has met are as different as Force lightning and natural rain. The disconnect is jarring and thinking about it too much puts a low, throbbing pain in Maul’s temples, so he sets the matter of power and philosophy aside for the time being and retrieves Master Jinn’s discarded cloak. It’s the same material as Maul’s own and absurdly long to accommodate the fact that Master Jinn is roughly the size of a wookie, and the pockets are full of _things_. A stylus, a broken commlink, wrappers, notes, rocks, dried plants, little wrapped sachets of tea, half a ration bar, a colorful bit of fabric that’s probably a scarf of some sort—ah, _there_. Maul grins to himself as he fishes out the holocron in its neat black box. True, he hadn’t been able to open it in the Temple — it hadn’t so muched repelled his attempts then as slipped through his mind’s grip like oil — but he’s outside of that place’s strange influence now. Here, darkness is the way of things rather than an undercurrent, so he may have a better shot. 

“Don’t,” growls Master Jinn, but he clearly can’t actually do anything about it, so Maul maintains eye contact while pulling the holocron out and makes a big show of sitting down to meditate with it. It’s warm in his hand, and he can feel its presence much more clearly now. He shuts his eyes and lets the familiar sensation wash over him, lets it wrap around him, consume him, and the holocron flickers and rises. Master Jinn appears to pause whatever breakdown he’s having to watch, and Maul feels a brief flash of victorious pride—

And then a too-familiar cold presence grips him, closes distant fingers around his neck and power like a vice over his mind. The holocron drops abruptly and rolls across the ground to Master Jinn’s feet while Maul goes still and silent. His master likes him silent, after all, and Sidious has found him at last.)

——————

There isn’t time for panic. There’s never time for panic, which is one of the many reasons that the Jedi frown upon it. The taste of the dark, metallic and bitter in Qui-Gon’s mouth, is a problem, certainly, and so is the holocron and so is the holdout in the apartment building down the street, and so is, most certainly the shadowy presence of Maul’s master pinning the apprentice to the ground. The last is the most pressing and thus the first that to be dealt with, and everything else would fall into place after—as it has to. _Breathe, center yourself, and find yourself within the Living Force._ (The practiced calm doesn’t come as easily as it should, but it comes.) He shuts his eyes and lets the Force flow through him.

After that, it’s simple. Not easy, of course, but _simple_ (and those words mean such very different things), because in this moment he is there and Sidious is not, and all the powers of the Dark Side cannot hold a candle to reality. The Living Force flows like water, and water can wear down mountains and transform planets and etch the passage of time into durasteel. Rage means nothing to it, no schemes and no ambition can curb it in any real way. Even the strongest dams eventually crack. (And if it is a furious, raging torrent rather than a steady stream that carves a canyon, what of it? It is the Living Force regardless.) It takes time, of course, too much time, but it pries Sidious’s ghost-grip off of his student all the same. And when the tides of the Force go back out, he’s gone, and Qui-Gon kneels cautiously beside Maul only for the young man to grab onto his sleeve like a life raft, eyes squeezed shut and shoulders shaking. 

(Of course, Sidious now knows one or two things he didn’t before. He knows about the holocron, for one thing, though he doesn’t know where it came from or why Qui-Gon has it, which annoys him. He also knows exactly who is protecting his wayward apprentice—the same fool who’d captured him to begin with, apparently, Yan Dooku’s menace of a former student who has darkness clinging to him. Sidious likes to think he plays an excellent game of dejarik, but he primarily wins because he plays against himself. This is why he thinks that the darkness that has begun to mar Qui-Gon’s consciousness will benefit him. It has never occurred to him that Plagueis may move against him, and why would it? Plagueis was no politician, after all, and he was always so quick to step aside and let Sidious take the spotlight and make decisions.) 

Qui-Gon exhales slowly. One at a time. That’s one problem more or less resolved, for now. Onto the next. Live one moment at a time. Lock away fear and pain and the sudden bone-weariness and carry on, as Jedi must. 

“Can you walk?” he asks. It comes out curt. (It often does. The Jedi are trained to be compassionate, yes, but they show their compassion through actions. It is always more helpful to build a hospital than to hold the hand of a dying citizen, but people tend to remember those who walk coldly away from sickbeds.) The apprentice takes a shuddering breath, steels himself, and nods. When he pulls himself to his feet, his eyes are the same bloodshot they had been on Tatooine. (They’re always yellow ringed with red, a sign of the Dark Side’s corruption, but they’d cleared somewhat during his time at the Temple. Influences of the Force aside, there is something to be said for sleep and quiet, even in a cell.)

“I’m fine,” he mutters. It’s less a lie, Qui-Gon thinks, and more a mantra. 

“Good. I need you to bring that woman back to the meeting. I don’t care how you do it, but I cannot do it myself.” He should care, he should, but he'll care later maybe. Maul nods and tugs up the hood of his cloak. 

“Alive?” he asks. It seems to be a sincere question. 

“Well, ideally.” Another nod. “I’ll meet you there. They should be through ransacking our ship by now. I can drop a few things off.” Simple. Step by step. Finish one thing and the rest fall into place. He offers Maul a hopefully encouraging smile and gets no expression whatsoever in response, but that’s fine. 

It has to be fine.


	13. Chapter 13

Stuffing the holocron and its box into a floor panel on the ship is almost physically painful. If the situation wasn’t so pressing, Qui-Gon would be curious about it — how it works, how long it takes to lure a victim, whether distance would limit the effects and how — but as is he just hopes it fades quickly. (The first flash of pain does. The lingering migraine, which starts as soon as he turns his back on the thing, does not, and neither does the strange coldness that seems to penetrate to his bones and leaves his hands shaking.) 

Maul turns up with their last target held at blasterpoint with a painful looking bruise blooming over her eye. She’s palpably furious, but apparently knows better than to try to fist-fight a Force-user. Maul is expressionless behind the tattoos and silent when he shoves his captive into the meeting room, but at least he’s there and obedient, even after the near-miss with his master. Qui-Gon gives him a muttered _good job_ then suggests he stand guard, and gets only a curt nod in response. (Maul may have a limited understanding of why people would help one another, but he knows very well when he’s _being_ helped. There has never been anyone to stand between him and his master, there has never been anything that would shield him from his master’s wrath, he’d never even considered the option, and yet the option is suddenly there. Is it a power specific to the Jedi, in their capacity as sworn protectors? That seems reasonable, but the Dark Side is supposed to be far more powerful than anything the Jedi can throw around. Is it something his master has kept from him through all the trials of his apprenticeship? And if so, what else has he hidden, what else has he lied about, what other power has he hoarded even as he sent Maul out to kill and risk death on his behalf? The doubt eats at him.)

The IGBC representatives seem somewhat surprised that Qui-Gon has managed to summon up something government-adjacent in short order, insofar as muuns can look surprised in a way that non-muuns can identify. (It is a good thing for Qui-Gon that they cannot identify the aftereffects of mind tricks. One or two do think the new representatives look like they’ve gone a round with the late Magister Damask, but they do not make the connection.) They do keep their word, though, and Qui-Gon once again finds himself sitting back and watching arguments unfold. They’re taking too long, and there’s a not-quite-distant-enough part of him that wants to _push them_. It would just be a little bit, for their own good, he’s already crossed lines here, _no one would know_ — (It is difficult to meditate, to find yourself in the Force when the Dark Side has thrown you off balance. It is easy, by contrast, to drown yourself in it. The temptation of power is one thing, but fear of a powerful enemy is another and both are hammering war drums in Qui-Gon’s head. He knows this, that’s why he pulls away so sharply. It’s what Jedi have always been taught to do—the Dark Side is like an infection, they say, best quarantined and treated and if that fails, _amputated_. No one wants to reach that point, no one wants to dwell on that, it’s best saved merely as a horror story for rowdy initiates. You know, far-off, distant things, like legends of Sith Lords, or evil empires, or the fall of the Old Republic.) 

They don’t reach the agreement Qui-Gon wants, but they manage to buy their people a few months’ time. That’s not much, not enough, but the muuns want their loans paid, not a planet starved. Qui-Gon points them at the Republic and signs off on a plea for humanitarian aid and feels profoundly helpless. What good is the Force, what good is power of any sort, when it all falls in the face of bureaucracy? 

(Therein lies the most important lesson Plagueis ever taught Sidious: power, any one sort of power, is not enough. It is institutions that win the day, institutions that survive where individuals fall. It is also the most important lesson to fall through the cracks of the Jedi Temple: one Jedi can live or die and it doesn’t matter, so long as the memory of the Temple carries on. This is a lesson, Plagueis had said: to destroy the Jedi, as the Sith were once destroyed, you don’t kill them all, you destroy what they stand for. This is also a lesson: the Sith were not destroyed, because one among them escaped Ruusan, fled to the edge of the galaxy, and took a student, and it is the height of arrogance to assume that that could not also happen for the Jedi, that these things do not happen again and again.) 

But, reasonably, it has to happen one step at a time, he knows that. When the four standard months are up, someone else will come and summon up another stopgap measure, or a new senator will be elected and will win the favor of some powerful party, or the IGBC will lose interest in this particular case and let them live a little longer. (He refuses to add _or maybe they’ll all kill each other_ to the list of options. People don’t want to kill each other, they don’t want to harm each other, people are, at their core, just trying to live their own lives in peace.) Their plea will reach the Senate, for now, and Qui-Gon’s report will reach the Temple when he writes it, and it’s another immediate problem solved. They’re even grateful, if wary, now that the lingering effects of his control are fading and a delivery of food and medicine has been formally scheduled. (So why does it feel like abject failure?)

After the report is written — too brief, too curt, again, Qui-Gon knows exactly what complaints will start up again now that Obi-Wan’s not around to write nice, detailed passages for him, and by the Force does he miss him — and sent — even though it should be delivered in person, another recurring complaint that had ceased with Obi-Wan’s intervention — Qui-Gon retreats onto his ship to wait for the accursed delivery to arrive. The migraine hasn’t faded and exhaustion is setting in over the cold. He just wants to rest, to stop struggling, stop resisting—no, that’s not right. He presses his head to cool metal and tries to calm himself. One more step. One more step until he’s off this rock. And then he can take Maul and … what, exactly? Return to the Temple, in the state he’s in? (It’s what he should do, probably. The correct thing for a Jedi to do would be to seek the aid of his masters, but Dooku’s run off to the Senate to hunt Sith Lords and Qui-Gon would rather die than admit weakness in front of the Council.) And Maul’s presence isn’t helping; even perched on a seat in padawan robes, reading quietly through loan statements, he’s a glaring reminder of failure like an untreated wound. 

No, the Temple won’t do. Qui-Gon knows there are other places to seek salvation, so once he has accounted for every last piece of the IGBC delivery (with Maul looking threatening with a clipboard stalking behind him), he sets course for Jedha, for the Holy City and the Guardians of the Whills. 

–––––––––––

(Despite its name, the Jedi have no claim to the moon of Jedha. Once, long ago, when the Infinite Empire of the Rakata ravaged the galaxy, the forebears of the Jedi walked the streets of the Holy City and prayed at its shrines and sought each other out. Once, long ago, they were among the many pilgrims of the Pilgrim Moon, and they studied the unknown thing that was the Force and formed the tentative alliances that would eventually bring down their overlords. Qui-Gon knows these stories well, better than most Jedi, for he spent much of his childhood and apprenticeship buried in legends and fables of the ancient Je’daii, of fallen Tythion, of prophecies, and of ancient powers lingering beyond the comprehension of modern society. Dooku had, in a moment of expressive fondness, gifted him with a massive compilation of such legends once, and then immediately regretted it as Qui-Gon had refused to do anything but read it for a week. 

Maul too, of course, can trace the lineage of his training back to those same pilgrims, though he has never been taught it or been allowed to lose himself in fables. Why would he? It is of no benefit to the Sith to remember that they were not always the shadow in the spaces between stars, that they had once been weak creatures that had refused to bow to the strong, that they had once been monks, that they had once dabbled blindly in the Force at the feet of greater things. Far better to spin the lie that they were heirs to empires from the start than to chance reminding their victims how revolutions rise. What Maul knows of Jedha are cold practicalities — coordinates, climate, population, like he knows for every planet Qui-Gon can name — and his master’s talk of deposits of kyber crystals. That, too, he doesn’t know the significance of — the kyber in his saber is synthetic, and surely making more isn’t that grand a task if he can do it himself. 

It has been many millennia since the precursors of the Je’daii prayed on Jedha, though. Their ancient temples are dust, and so are those that had been built to replace them, and those that had replaced the replacements, and even then the moon’s structures are amongst the oldest in the galaxy. There are still pilgrims who come to pray, but mostly from the more esoteric of religions. So much has been standardized since then, after all, and it is an enlightened time when people don’t throw around the word _holy_ so easily. Jedha, they say, is a place where the Force is strong, or a valuable historical site, and both of those things are true. Those who guard it and remember the old ways are relics, then, to a one. It’s alright. The Guardians of the Whills never asked for glory.) 

_The Force is omnipresent here_ , Qui-Gon thinks when they land. There are places where it bubbles up to the surface, like in the Temple, and places where corruption runs so deep people can go mad just by lingering, but on Jedha the Force is simply present, and it is everywhere. It’s a relief, a sensation like sinking into a soft bed after you’ve worked yourself to the bone, and he shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath and almost thinks it clears his lungs. Some of the pounding migraine fades, and the holocron’s pull is suddenly just a whisper, and when he opens his eyes again the air is cool and sunlight streams in through the windows. The ship looks like it needs a good cleaning, and Qui-Gon abruptly remembers that he hasn’t washed his hair since leaving Coruscant, and Maul looks very focused on tying his bootlaces. (This is how things are supposed to be. This is the moment how it exists and how he ought to perceive it.) The next moment, a jumble of thoughts rush in to fill the stillness as if it had never existed, and Qui-Gon rakes a frustrated hand through his hair only to hit a truly atrocious knot and yank his own head sideways. The urge to cut it out with his saber is brief and extremely stupid, at least he’s well aware of that. 

“... Is that a common problem?” Maul asks, apparently having deemed his bootlaces symmetrical enough. Qui-Gon stares blankly, and the apprentice mimes something at the side of his head. “Hair.” Qui-Gon shrugs noncommittally and waves him off the ship. 

––––––––––––

Compared to Coruscant, the city is empty, but compared to Coruscant most places are. Pilgrims and visitors drift by and the locals go about their daily lives. It’s quiet here, and the cold air is crisp and clean. Qui-Gon slows his pace, though on some level he wants to run to the Guardians and plead for sanctuary, and reminds himself that walking the Holy City is as much part of the ritual as entry into the Temple of Kyber. (The Jedi keep rock gardens and trace mazes in the sand for much the same reason.) The path is long and winding, and if Qui-Gon closes his eyes and relaxes he can almost feel the echoes of those who had walked the same road centuries and millennia past. Behind him, Maul keeps stopping to read plaques on buildings and statues with the air of a curious student. (There is information here he has never heard before, after all, and after a short lifetime as Sidious’s apprentice Maul knows full well that information has value. He’s keeping a mental list of names and places and organizations and dates to cross-check when he next has access to Master Nu’s Archive, ones that are completely unfamiliar or that seem to contradict what he has been taught or have details that ring just slightly wrong. There isn’t much difference, to him, between finding and exploiting gaps in an opponent’s guard and finding similar gaps in his knowledge, and he knows either one can be deadly.) 

There are acolytes at the Temple’s gates, a gaggle of teenagers and young adults trying very hard to look serious and not like they’ve been caught in the middle of some silly game. Unfortunately for them, one is trying to look serious while standing on one leg on a railing, and two others are holding buckets full of some slimy substance Qui-Gon can’t identify from where he’s standing. (He has no room to judge, given what sort of antics he got up to at their age.) 

“We seek entrance into the Temple of Kyber, so that we may meditate upon the Way,” Qui-Gon says formally. Formality is a good refuge when you’re caught with slime, he’s learned. 

“Those seeking sanctuary are welcome, please enter,” intones the acolyte standing on one leg. “We are one with the Force, may it be with you.”

“And also with you,” says Qui-Gon. The remaining acolytes drop back while two pry open the Temple’s massive doors, and then he feels motion in the Force behind him. He turns sharply, just in time to see Maul try to Force-push the acolyte off his perch only to get smacked in the chest with a bo staff for his troubles by another acolyte and turn on him with a startled hiss. 

“Baze,” says the boy on the railing abruptly. “Would you say the view from up here is good? I could ask our new friend to join me.” He turns when he says that, and Qui-Gon can see his eyes are clouded over and blind. The one with the staff, presumably Baze, huffs. 

“I don’t think he wants to join you,” he says, exasperation not quite masking the fondness in his tone. “Do you, traveller?” That last part’s addressed at Maul, who somehow manages to be more startled by being addressed than by being hit. 

“I… Master Jinn wants to go in there,” he non-answers and tilts his head towards the Temple. Baze nods curtly.

“See?” he says. The acolyte on the railing hums under his breath. 

“I will be here all day if you change your mind,” he says, then turns back away. Baze shrugs. 

“The Temple is open to you, traveler,” he adds, and Qui-Gon says the appropriate words of thanks before physically steering Maul inside. 

—————————

The Temple of the Kyber is an impressive structure that dominates Jedha’s skyline. Inside, it has high, cavernous ceilings decorated with ancient prayers and fading mosaics and patterns the meanings of which have been lost to time. The tunnels beneath the temple are lined with kyber statues, and in the main building veins of kyber climb the walls and illuminate all present in a soft, cool glow. Here, too, the kyber has been worked into art—the veins grow into massive murals, and the crystals blooming from columns have been sculpted into myriad shapes. When the doors close, the Temple gives the illusion of near infinity, of existence spreading out in all directions and waiting for the faithful to explore it, and the song of the kyber crystals resonates low and sweet and soft. Qui-Gon has been here before, but it never fails to make an impact on him. He breathes deeply and is suddenly very aware of the tension in his shoulders. _Relax_. He opens his eyes in time to see Maul shake his head sharply like he has water in his ears. 

“The crystals,” Qui-Gon explains, biting back amusement. “That’s what you’re hearing.” Maul makes a scornful noise that does little to cover up his palpable discomfort. It shouldn’t be discomfiting, Qui-Gon thinks, it’s supposed to bring solace, but he remembers the red saber now locked safely away and he remembers that it screams. (Natural kyber is partway alive, thrumming with the Force, and in the eyes of the Jedi a synthetic replica is practically an abomination. That’s not entirely true, though—droids are synthetic too, but given time and exposure to the right things, they can and do develop into living, thinking beings. The same is true of kyber; the crystals in Sith sabers are wrought with the power of the Dark Side, yes, but it is folly to blame them for how they were made.)

He ends up leaving Maul with explicit instructions not to harass, hurt, or otherwise bother the Guardians and maybe try to meditate over the kyber crystals (a tall order, really), and follows a familiar route up a gentle slope around the tower’s edge. High above the ground, the walls are studded with honeycomb cells where pilgrims can sit alone and find their inner peace. Qui-Gon picks one at random and sits cross-legged beneath carved kyber flowers that look nearly real enough to shed petals on his shoulders and fill the air with fragrance rather than the cool scent of emptiness. Emptiness is better, though, emptiness without and emptiness within. There is no fear, there is no death, there is no chaos. There is only the Force. 

(In the cavernous hall below, Maul sits with his back pressed to a column and wonders about power and the Force. That strange, distantly familiar power that had freed him, however briefly, from his master’s grip on Kesmere Minor is surely not beyond him, the more he thinks about it the more certain he is. This is some part of the Force he hasn’t been taught, perhaps, but not one he cannot reach. _The Force flows through all things_ , Master Jinn had said, and if he looks too closely at the kyber crystals here he can almost see something flow like water just beneath the surface. Perhaps the next time, he can slip through his master’s grip like liquid too, and… Well. Next steps will come later. For now, he rests his head against the column and tries to reach out. It’s a start.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent entirely too long on Wookiepedia and realized that Baze is just a year younger than Maul, so clearly he and Chirrut needed an early cameo in this extended attempt to mash new canon and legends into something coherent! They'll be back later on, of course.


	14. Chapter 14

_There is no fear, there is no death, there is no chaos. There is only the Force._

There is only the Force, but there must also be peace, and that doesn’t come so easily to Qui-Gon, even here. His mind drifts, worry and fear and hunger for knowledge, all things that people can easily be consumed by. It isn’t easy, but he can block the blasted holocron into a corner of his mind where it can be ignored, but that’s just a piece of a wider problem. Holocron or not, Damask and Sifo-Dyas have foretold war, war like the galaxy hasn’t seen for millennia. (Not since the Sith had last openly walked the streets has the Republic known war. Planets have, regularly, people have, species have, but for the Republic, and truth be told for most of the galaxy, it has been a golden age of peace.) And even without war, there is uncertainty. Dooku is mounting his one-man campaign against Force-knows-what, and fond as Qui-Gon is of his former master the recklessness of it is thrown in stark relief by the glow of the kyber flowers. And Obi-Wan is off alone now, facing the coming dark as a knight when surely there was still so much left to teach him, surely there was still so much that could have been done. And Anakan—oh, Anakin, the further Qui-Gon gets from Tatooine the more he wonders and worries about Anakin. What if he’s wrong, and Anakin is just an ordinary if powerful child—and what if he isn’t, what if he’s something far greater and far, far worse…

He presses the heel of his hands to his forehead as if pressure could force the thoughts out. Now isn’t the time to be dwelling on hypotheticals. _There is only the Force and it is only now. There is only the Force…_

...

He opens his eyes to sunlight gleaming off of Coruscant roofs through a window so clear for a moment he thinks he’s standing on the building’s very edge. 

“Striking, isn’t it?” says Dooku, who is lounging on an ornate crimson chair and wearing some sort of ceremonial robes. “Not one I would have picked, I admit, but Damask certainly had taste.”

“Damask…?” Qui-Gon echoes. The name should mean something, but his mind feels fogged. Is he supposed to be here? Is Dooku supposed to be here? His former master laughs, and it’s a cold, unfamiliar sound. 

“Don’t play the fool, Qui-Gon. We both know what this is about.” 

“Do we?” Qui-Gon asks. It’s a dream, it has to be. Dooku looks up at him with blank yellow eyes and raises a cup of crimson tea in a toast. 

“Of course we do. It’s the death of the Republic, dear boy. Join me, and we can watch it collapse like the plagued thing it is.” 

Behind him, the light from the window is suddenly blotted out. Qui-Gon turns and sees something has eclipsed the sun. Dooku sighs. 

“A sign of the times, I would say. Don’t worry, it can’t hurt us, not until it’s really here.” Qui-Gon doesn’t remember taking the cup from him, but he’s holding it now, and the red liquid swirls even as he tries to hold it steady…

...

The red on his hands is blood, of course. He doesn’t know whose, but it stains his hands and his robes and the ground beneath his feet. Around him, the battlefield is littered with the dead and dying, some desperately clinging to the last threads of life even as they slip through their fingers. 

“That’s what war is,” says a young man Qui-Gon doesn’t know. There’s a scar over his eye and he wears black. “If you’re afraid, you should be among the dead.”

“Should I?” 

The man in black frowns, and fury and grief radiate from him to ripple through the Force. This isn’t a pebble thrown into still water, this is the changing tide. He rounds on Qui-Gon, saber in hand.

“Shouldn’t you? What gives you the right to live when they are dead? After everything that’s happened, after everything you’ve caused, what gives you the right?”

“Why did they die?” Qui-Gon asks. _It’s a dream, he knows it’s a dream, or a vision, or something else unreal. The war hasn’t come, the sun hasn’t been blotted out, the man in black is still a child._ “Can you tell me, before you strike me down?”

“They died for the Republic,” the man in black spits. “And what has the Republic done for them?” He lashes out with the saber, but the blow never connects…

...

A man in a long cloak stalks through the flaming wreckage of a city, a red saber in his hand. 

“Congratulations on your victory, Master,” he snarls. “Always knew what you really were.” 

“Then what was I?” Qui-Gon asks. 

“A failure,” replies the man in the cloak. “You always were and you always will be. This is the death of the Republic, you see, and this is how the end begins.”

“How, then?” 

“Blood and ashes,” says the man, and turns and runs someone through with the red saber. His victim falls to his knees, and it’s Obi-Wan, barely fifteen and wide-eyed with fear, and his heart is seized with despair—

_That isn’t right, Obi-Wan’s alive. Obi-Wan’s grown. Obi-wan isn't here._

...

Qui-Gon blinks and the scene shifts to the bloodstained battlefield. Obi-Wan approaches the man in black, bearded and greying at the temples and heartbroken. 

“What have you done?” he asks. “All of these people—”

“This is the death of the Republic,” says the man in black. “This is how the end begins.” _Qui-Gon is frozen in place as they duel, fury and despair, and no matter how desperately he tries to reach out he can’t stop the inevitable._ the man in black runs Obi-Wan through with his saber and casts his body aside—

_That isn’t right. None of this has happened yet. He’s still a child, Obi-Wan is a young man, the war hasn’t started..._

...

“You really don’t understand, do you?” Dooku asks, and they’re back in the room that had once belonged to Hego Damask. “You can’t stop it. An era is ending. Do you want to see another?”

“You’re not Dooku,” he tells the apparition. It smiles. 

“No, not yet. But I can be. There are only so many choices one can make before the path ends, and I am one of the endings. Would you like to see another?” The shadow falls over the sun again. 

“Is it the death of the Republic?” Qui-Gon asks. The apparition shakes its head.

“Not this one, this one is just death.” 

...

He runs down the empty hall, past the bodies of guards. It’s not too late, it can’t be too late—there! The door opens at his shove, and he sees Dooku kneeling with a saber at his throat. He opens his mouth to speak, but another blade is plunged through his heart, and he drops limp to the ground. His killer rises, blades in hand. 

“Do you know who I am?”

“Death,” Qui-Gon says. The scene changes.

...

This is a ship, he thinks, a star destroyer of some sort, only completely devoid of life. A lone figure stands at the controls. Obi-Wan. He can recognize his apprentice even years apart and from behind, and this time he can run to him. He reaches out and grabs his apprentice’s arm, and finds himself looking into empty eyes stained red-gold by the Dark. 

“You’re quite too late,” says Obi-Wan flatly. “You always were. I’ve killed them, you know.”

“But why?” 

“There wasn’t any other way. Sometimes there isn’t.”

...

The scene changes. With a blaster in his hands, he turns and shoots Obi-Wan off a cliff. There’s just enough time to see his face and the same wide-eyed fear he sometimes wore as a boy. 

...

The scene changes. It’s the Temple stained with blood and littered with bodies of people he knows.

...

The scene changes. The Senate burns. _No it doesn’t._ The Senate has been dissolved. _No it hasn’t._ There’s been a coup, there’s been an uprising, there’s been the steady march of corruption. 

...

The scene changes. Padme, all grown up, watches the destruction from a high window. 

“It’s over,” she says mournfully. “This is the death of the Republic.” 

_But there’s still time, this doesn't have to come to pass, does it?_

...

The scene changes, blood and torture. 

The scene changes, and there’s an invasion fleet approaching. 

The scene changes, and the tally of the dead is greater than the population of Coruscant, greater than the population of the Core, greater than anything he can fathom. 

The scene changes, and _how many times must he see them die and not be able to do anything about it—_

“Master Qui-Gon!” Obi-Wan is calling for him through the din, frightened and pleading, but he doesn’t know which of the flashing visions the voice is coming from. “Master Qui-Gon, wake up, please!” 

_This is the death of the Republic and there’s no way out._

“Master Qui-Gon!” 

The scene changes. 

...

He opens his eyes to a cell and kyber flowers and the door thrown open, and Obi-Wan shaking him by the shoulders while two of the young acolytes linger in the doorway. The air is clear and clean and the quiet song of the kyber crystals fills his ears, and this isn’t a dream, oh he _prays_ this isn’t another dream as he sinks into Obi-Wan’s arms with a strangled sob. 

——————

(Obi-Wan is steady and dutiful, all the masters in the Temple say, assorted Jinn-And-Kenobi Incidents aside. For every problem he has been party to there are three he has helped clean up with a polite smile fixed on his face and an aura of calm emanating from him like the low glow of a kyber crystal. He has been a model apprentice, early difficulties aside, and everyone expects he will be a model knight and then a model master: quiet and obedient and good. They aren’t wrong, exactly, Obi-Wan is all of those things, but he isn’t solely those things. A spectator would be excused, though, for thinking so at the moment.

Obi-Wan arrives on Jedha on a pilgrims’ transport, and all aboard think he is a polite and handsome, if rather forgettable, young man. In the streets, he slips through crowds like water through cracks and explains his case to the Guardian acolytes in a clear and proper way. His master — former master, that’s the only moment where he wavers — has gone missing after a mission, and Obi-Wan’s tracked his ship here, and would it be permitted for him to enter and make sure everything was alright? He doesn’t want to be a bother, he explains, and when one of the acolytes notes that the old Jedi had entered the Temple with a different student he smiles and nods politely and confirms that the student is a tattooed zabrak boy about shoulder-height on Qui-Gon. 

“I’d best make sure he’s alright too,” he says. “I do hope neither of them have caused you trouble.”

“Not at all,” says the blind acolyte, matching Obi-Wan’s bland smile almost perfectly. “Perhaps some of us should accompany you. The Temple can be difficult to navigate.” 

“That would be appreciated,” Obi-Wan says, and doesn’t show even a hint of relief. 

Inside, the air feels thick with pain and fear and grief. The blind acolyte stumbles at the force of it, and his companion catches his hand to pull him along. Obi-Wan seems unaffected and marches steadily on. Maul is sitting with his eyes shut and his back to one of the columns, legs folded and hands on his knees. He is so quiet one could almost miss the fact his sharp claws, left untrimmed too long, have dug through his gloves and several layers of fabric, leaving circles of bloodstains on his robes and trousers. Obi-Wan notices, of course, because he has an eye for that sort of thing, and because he knows Qui-Gon well enough to know not all the pain and fear flooding the place is his. 

He finds Qui-Gon in the cells, and if he is startled or worried by the twisted and agonized expression on his former master’s face, or by waxy skin or the bags under his eyes that look more like bruises, or by utter disarray of his hair and beard and robes, or by the gouges scratched up and down his exposed forearms, or by the radiating power that has lifted Qui-Gon half off his knees and left him dangling in the air, it doesn’t show. Instead, Obi-Wan kneels in front of him and catches him by the shoulders. He could panic and plead, but that doesn’t help in these situations — he doesn’t think it ever helps, not really, and the acolytes behind him are already on edge and this cell functions as something of an amplifier anyway.

“Master Qui-Gon, wake up please!” It’s delivered in the same tone as _Master Qui-Gon, pack more rations please, this mission is supposed to last a week_ , and the overwhelming normalcy of it seems to make an impression. “Master Qui-Gon!” 

And Qui-Gon slumps into his arms, awake to himself again. 

“Right,” says Obi-Wan, because this isn’t the time for relief either. “Could the two of you help me move him, please? I’m not sure he can walk.” The taller of the acolytes obligingly helps heft Qui-Gon to his feet while the blind boy loops back down the ramp to collect Maul, who stares sullenly with his ruined gloves hidden up his sleeves. 

“Doesn’t seem like this was a successful detour,” he mutters. 

“Could be far worse,” says Obi-Wan mildly. “I did manage to find you two.” That’s why the Jedi Order is an order, after all. There are few things that can happen to a Jedi that cannot be made worse by being alone against the storm, but so long as the order persists, ideally, they will never be alone. 

“You did,” Maul concedes. “Now what?” 

And if Obi-Wan thinks _and now I could kill you_ , because he’s armed and backed by the two acolytes and knows they won’t stop him if he brands Maul a Sith and the cause of all this, because he can feel Qui-Gon’s agony like blood in his mouth, because he is Qui-Gon’s student, not this usurper, because he has done everything right all this time and gotten nothing but tossed aside for more _interesting creatures_ , it doesn’t show. 

“Back to Coruscant. Master Jinn needs help, and that holocron needs to be locked away.” He smiles politely, and Maul doesn’t smile back. “Don’t suppose you have other plans?”

“... No,” Maul replies after a long moment, and falls into step behind them.)


	15. Chapter 15

Qui-Gon doesn’t remember being bundled back onto his ship, or Obi-Wan fielding curious questions and offers of aid from the Guardian acolytes—or the arrival, for that matter, of one of the senior Guardians to see what all the fuss was about this time, who takes one look at Qui-Gon draped sideways across three seats and a box, Maul perched on top of the ship and watching proceedings with academic curiosity, and Obi-Wan with his placid smile stretched so tightly it may break ,and and promptly planned a three week lecture course on why the Guardians ought not interfere with Jedi Nonsense. He doesn’t remember Obi-Wan prying an abbreviated account of the Kesmere Minor affair out of the Sith apprentice either, one that skips entirely over death threats, mind tricks, and Darth Sidious and lingers for a solid two minutes without pause on predatory loan terms. (Obi-Wan can fill in many of the blanks himself, he knows his master well enough.) 

In fact, the next thing Qui-Gon does remember is waking up in the Halls of Healing to Anakin sitting at the foot of his bed and yammering excitedly. Off to the side, Knight Eerin is going her best to look interested while Obi-Wan seems dangerously close to nodding off while standing. Safe and sound and home, then, though all those things leave Qui-Gon feeling like there’s a hole in the back of his head. He tries to move, cautiously, and is rewarded with dull, throbbing pain in any limb he tries to shift. It’s enough to make Obi-Wan animate and hasten to his side, though not enough to put a damper on Anakin’s tale of, apparently, almost drowning and accidentally punching Master Fisto in the gills. The normalcy of it is obnoxious. 

“Master, how are you feeling?” Obi-Wan asks. The normalcy of _him_ is obnoxious. Qui-Gon can’t decide if he wants to snap at his apprentice or embrace him. What comes out of his mouth is sarcasm instead, because that’s many a Jedi’s first line of defense. 

“Never better, never better, I’m thinking of recommending such adventures as a relaxation technique, in fact. How long have I been out?” Obi-Wan waffles. (He wants an answer to that too, really, and puts the start time somewhere well before Qui-Gon’s flight to Jedha.) 

“He brought you in two days ago, give or take,” supplies Eerin helpfully. “Be glad the droids dunked you in the sanisteam since then, by the way, Master Jinn, or we wouldn’t be keeping you company.”

“You were real sick,” says Anakin with all the solemnity he can muster. “Maul says you got poisoned!” (It isn’t an inaccurate description of the holocron’s effects, really, filtered through Maul’s unwillingness to give details and Anakin’s as-yet limited understanding of the Force.) Qui-Gon stares at him for a moment, as if staring will draw something eldritch and ancient out from what currently appears to be a wholly normal padawan, then gives up and tries to sink into his pillows instead. 

“ _Real_ sick, yes,” he agrees. “But it’ll all be alright now.” The words ring hollow, but he doesn’t think anyone notices. They’ll make a good mantra, maybe, when he’s stuck on extended medical leave with memories of dark potential futures for company. There is only now, and now everything is alright. 

“‘Cause of Obi-Wan!” Anakin announces cheerfully, and Eerin punches Obi-Wan in the shoulder gently and laughs. 

————————

(Qui-Gon will have plenty of time to brood on his experiences. The Jedi are on edge, and seeing another master in such a state, after Dooku, after Sifo-Dyas, after proof of the Sith and talk of prophecy, has the Temple and its healers on high alert. The holocron is sealed away somewhere only Master Nu or those cleared by her can reach it, and every thought and action is assessed twice over for hints of Dark Side influence. Of course, that sort of self-assessment falls a bit short of its goals, as those who are falling under the sway of the Dark Side tend to think themselves fully rational and in control. 

This will, undoubtedly, keep the lot of them occupied and distracted for the near future. Let’s look somewhere else for a time, and take up the thread of two girls. They are, though they don’t know it, only roughly a standard month apart in age. That is one of two things they have in common. The other commonality is rage.

Padmé no longer wears Naboo’s crown, but many of her people still see her as queen. Her successor is clever and strong too, of course, but she is a quiet and demure girl who would never think to go after invaders with a blaster or melt into the crowds as one of her own handmaidens. She writes to Padmé, when the latter is on Coruscant trading barbs with other young political hopefuls, asking for advice and confessing fear—fear of another attack, fear of the future, fear of a nebulous darkness. Padmé writes her back to be brave, because a queen must be the soul of her people, but what she wants to write is _be angry_.

They don’t recognize her on Coruscant, because without her makeup and in students’ garb she looks like a girl rather than a painted Naboo doll. Some, like the young senator from Alderaan, make the connection when she speaks, but many don’t and end up critiquing the salvation of her people to her face. She hates them for it. She hates them more when she digs through archives bills and documentation, first searching for validation that Valorum really had betrayed her, and then searching simply for the end of the line of bargains and red tape that truly had bound the former chancellor’s hands and left planets, her dear Naboo but hundreds of others too, at the mercy of what the flimsiwork called business interests and gentle Senator Organa called predators.

She reads about Kesmere Minor, among others, and tries to plead to Palpatine for expanded republic control over the banks, but he has no time for her between meetings and when she does catch him he is in the company of a pair of muuns in IGBC regalia. Uncle Ono, too, is too busy for her, though admittedly quite apologetic about it, so she finds Senator Organa instead, on his sixth cup of caff and talking to the senator from Serenno, an imposing-looking old man who has taken a different approach and is drinking wine at nine in the morning. They, at least, hear her out.

“We’ve been trying,” Organa says, finally, after she has worn herself out yelling. “The trouble is that the IGBC doesn’t actually fall under the Republic’s control. If it did, the currency would no longer be tied to market value.”

“Does anything at all fall under the Republic's control?” she snaps. The senator from Serenno downs the rest of his wine and smiles grimly.

“Oh, of course. Like any powerful institution, it can only do too much or not enough.”

“Dooku, please,” Organa chides. “What we can do is regulate their actions, though that is an ongoing battle with loopholes.” He says quite a bit more, but Padmé is fourteen and can be forgiven for not wanting to hear about incremental steps. She hears it anyway.

A new representative from Kesmere Minor is delivered to the Senate some weeks later to plead her people's case, and Padmé dodges under a podium and nearly falls down a flight of stairs to get to the woman before anyone else does and hand her a carefully cited and referenced plan of action to propose.

“You have to force their hand,” she says. “If they start debating it, you’ll never get anywhere, but if you force an immediate vote it can work.”

It doesn’t. The proposal fails twice and doesn’t even reach the senate floor another four times. It passes two months later tacked onto an infrastructure spending bill after an extended debate about something not actually pertinent to the vote that culminates in Senator Dooku and the senator from Thrad yelling at Senator Taa about accounting software for nearly two standard hours.

“That’s not,” Padmé says later, “how it’s supposed to work.” She’s sitting in Senator Organa’s office again, between two staffers, the Thradian senator and her aide, the representative from Kesmere Minor, and a protocol droid serving alcohol she’s much too young to legally drink. The Thradian senator shoots her a pitying look and requests some celebratory juice instead.

“Come now, this is a government office—we hardly need to follow the law,” objects Dooku, who is holding court from behind Organa’s desk while Organa hands out datapads. Organa plucks his glass from his hands and sets it on the shelf in response.

“It may not be how it’s supposed to work, but it’s how the Senate does work,” he says. He’s a good man, Padmé thinks, sensible and kind, but at the moment he looks very tired and his smile is very bitter. “The only thing they will vote for the first time around is war funding.”

“Not when we need it,” Padmé retorts.

“Naboo was a trade dispute,” the Thradian senator corrects gently. “It isn’t war unless it’s declared as such.” She knows, she knows, and it makes her blood boil.

“It shouldn’t work like that,” she mutters helplessly. “We should do better than that.”

“We’re working on it,” says Organa, and Padmé is handed a glass of juice in time to toast to that.

The other girl is a few standard weeks Padmé’s senior, though if they were placed side by side by some twist of fate few would guess it. She is half a galaxy away from Coruscant, on the edge of Wild Space, and for all that Padmé's sphere impacts her own she may well be in a different universe. Rattatak rests well outside the Republic's influences, and even the Jedi do not come to broker peace among the warring clans. The one that did, Asajj Ventress has learned, did so by accident and died for his folly. She cried for Ky Narec, of course she did, and she burned his body in a pyre like he'd once told her was traditional, but before she did either of those things she tore his killers' throats out, and after she burned him she took his lightsaber and went to war.

Asajj is hardly the first or the last forsaken slave girl on Rattatak, but she has rather more raw power than most. People had called Narec a sorcerer, but they call _her_ other things—a witch child, a tsic-soo, a monster, an animal. He'd called her padawan, once, but these new names seem a bit more fitting. Blood that she can't wash out stains her hands, and she stops sleeping unless she absolutely must because the nightmares that ravage her are far worse than any exhaustion. At the Temple, you see, where Narec himself was trained, a brokenhearted padawan could turn to any number of people for support, but Asajj is all alone in the dark, and the Dark Side has no mercy for children. It does not take her long to begin to cut a swath of destruction through Rattatak's criminal elite. 

Revenge drives her, but it doesn't devour her whole, which is a testament to that fundamental potential Narec saw in her six years prior. She wants revenge, yes, but the mad despair and fury cool and coalesce into a deep, desperate desire for change. Rattatak has no senate to argue laws through and no queens to plead to, and to her these are utterly alien concepts anyway, but change can be wrought with a weapon well enough. Asajj sits at night with the lightsaber clutched in her hands and doesn't think of Narec lecturing on the grace of form and the importance of balance. Instead she lists never-agains.

Never again pirates taking children from their homes.

Never again men who grab at slaves like they're not people. 

Never again slave markets and collars and chains. 

Never again killers unpunished, never again corpses left in the streets. 

Never again warlords who march mercenary armies through towns and leave only suffering and ashes. 

Never again girls kneeling in pools of blood, never again raids and raiders, never again, when she is through with them, war. 

She's never learned to meditate properly, but she knows a mantra when she hears it. This is one that can carry her on for years if need be, because Rattatak is a big place and beyond it, she knows, are other places like it, and if she is a witch and a monster she will use it and break and bend all these places to her whims. 

Narec had told her once that the Jedi fight to make the galaxy a better place. Asajj can understand that now in a way that she couldn't before. It's a terrible place, but that's because the people in power are terrible. She can make it better. And if she can't, stars can see she can burn it down and stop it getting worse. When she reaches out into the Force, like she's been taught, it thrums with agreement.)

——————

“The Dark Side is a corruption,” says Master Mundi. “It can stay buried deep within us for years on end, waiting for us to lower our guard and our inhibitions. As soon as we do, we fall victim to it.”

He sits at the head of a room that Qui-Gon doesn’t recall having been designed for lectures, and an assortment of older initiates and young apprentices sit listening to him. Around the edges of the crowd stand several masters, Qui-Gon included, who have been tasked with answering questions “or whatever else would be needed.” Qui-Gon rather expects to be used as an object lesson any moment, but Mundi won’t meet his eyes. Near the door, Plo Koon folds his hands into his sleeves and nods. 

“There are no simple paths to power,” he adds, and the audience scrambles slightly to face him. “And power, in and of itself, is not a goal. Power is only a tool, and it alone cannot solve your problems. Do you all understand?”

There is a murmur of agreement from the audience, and Qui-Gon hopes he looks serenely above it all. It isn’t about power, though, not primarily at least, is it? The memory of Kesmere Minor and the holocron’s lure is distant, but he doesn’t think he recalls thinking of power. (Of course he hadn’t. Qui-Gon has all the power, in terms of physicality and the Force, he could want, unlike the assembled children. Damask’s holocron had taken a different tack, whispering of knowledge and solutions to problems—those are power too, just in a different guise than the Jedi normally consider. After all, it is their very duty to reach out and try to fix what is broken, to know the answers and to be guides, to be attuned to the mysteries of the Force. It is the pursuit of power, with ill intentions, that is the path to the Dark Side, but few stop to think about the potential corrupting nature of the power they already have.) 

The apprentices and initiates are obedient and obliging, they nod when they are supposed to and agree aloud and listen with their hands folded, but Qui-Gon can tell the lesson is having very little impact. More importantly, he can tell that the other masters also realize this. Mundi rubs his expansive forehead and sets aside his notes well before the end of the lecture, and Master Poof makes his subtle escape sometime before then. Plo Koon doesn’t quite sigh when he asks if there are any questions, but the sentiment is there. The questions he gets are polite and surface-level. (The Temple’s children know it is improper to ask things like _but what if I’m scared_ or _but what if someone’s about to die_ or _but how do you tell your own thoughts from others’_ , though these are all questions that should be answered. Even Anakin has learned this in his short tenure at the Temple—Jedi aren’t supposed to _ask_ things like that, they’re supposed to _know_. It is not a new failing of the institution; each of the masters learned the same thing as a child, and each has grown old convinced that everyone else _knows_ and they do not. That’s absurd, of course, because there is no _knowing_ in the Force as much as there is finding and learning, and every teacher in the Temple is utterly sincere in wanting to answer questions.) As they file out, a miralukan initiate grips the back of Anakin’s robes (because he’s loud and bright and easier to find in the Force than the door at the moment, and he’s always nice to the younger children) and mumbles something about the Jedi already being powerful. 

“Uh-huh,” Anakin agrees. “We are. And power breaks chains.” Some of the other apprentices seem dubious of this, but most of the children accept it without question. (After all, Anakin’s an apprentice too, he must know things, and the Jedi and the Republic are supposed to bring peace and freedom and democracy to the galaxy.) 

“Is it a poem?” the miralukan initiate asks curiously. 

“A mantra,” Anakin tells her, and misses the flash of worry that passes through his master’s presence. (After all, he has learned dozens of mantras in a very short time, he can’t really be expected to keep straight which ones are from Master Yoda and which ones are from Obi-Wan and Bant, and which ones are from Master Plo, who says to call him Teacher Plo if that’s easier but that’s not really-really allowed, and which ones are from Maul. All of those people know far more about the Force than Anakin does.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How old is Ventress? Who knows. For fic purposes(™), she's Padmé's age, since I couldn't find anything to reasonably contradict that. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	16. Chapter 16

“Did you teach him that?” Plo Koon asks, falling into easy step beside Qui-Gon as they leave. It’s a necessary question, of course, one to which the man clearly expects a negative answer, but it puts Qui-Gon’s hackles up regardless. What right, asks a recently loud part of Qui-Gon’s mind, has Plo Koon to steal Anakin and then accuse him of corrupting the boy? 

“When would I have had the chance?” Qui-Gon snaps before he can stop himself, because of course he has no claim to Anakin and of course it isn’t an accusation. “No—no, of course not. Perhaps you just can’t keep close enough watch on your padawan.”

“I know where he goes,” says Plo mildly. “I think a listening bug would be a step too far, don’t you?” Qui-Gon shrugs. (Maybe if he’d bugged Xanatos he’d have had advance warning—or maybe not.)

“Then you know he spends next to no time with me.”

“Quite,” says Plo. “Would you then aid me in investigating the likely culprit, my friend?” It’s frustrating that Plo doesn’t get frustrated back at him. He shouldn’t, of course, the emotions of others should pass over a Jedi like water, and one’s own emotions should be released into the Force. He tries. (Like master, like student, Plo thinks, and sees an echo of Dooku as he watches Qui-Gon’s anger rise and crash like waves upon a beach. He’d never been particularly fond of Dooku—the man’s talents were worthy of respect, certainly, but his arrogance and temper were not. Perhaps it is for the best, for now, that Anakin isn’t in Qui-Gon’s care.)

They find Maul practicing handstands in his cell. (He’s bored. Since they’d given up keeping him in manacles he’d been getting semi-regular visitors—Anakin, often, or Obi-Wan with a superior smirk and a dejarik board, or a mirialan knight with tattoos on her chin who’d had some actually interesting questions about lightsaber forms. Ever since Kesmere Minor, however, the visits have stopped, and he has been intercepted and forced back to his cell each time he tries to visit the Archives. The sudden solitude grates on him.) He pointedly ignores their presence and Qui-Gon loudly clearing his throat until he’s addressed by name, then drops into a seated position and glares. 

“What?” Maul mutters. So very much of this is his fault, says the voice in the back of Qui-Gon’s head, if it wasn’t for him— But doesn’t sound right, he’s only an apprentice, and surely Qui-Gon is far above suffering at an apprentice’s hands. That doesn’t sound right either, but the reason is a lot more distant. Qui-Gon breathes deeply and tries to center himself, and when he shuts his eyes he sees a flash of Kesmere Minor—blind terror and the looming, freezing presence of Darth Sidious, and a desperate hand gripping Qui-Gon’s sleeve. The memory-vision passes before he can even shiver. 

“How are you?” he asks with a blank smile instead of saying anything sensible. (It’s an inherited trait that Obi-Wan has a double helping of, but Dooku had once said the phrase ‘top of the morning’ to someone aiming a blaster point-blank at his left eyeball.) Maul’s glare turns to a confused stare.

“... Just get on with the interrogation,” he says after a long moment. 

“If that’s the approach you’d prefer,” replies Plo. “You seem to be an influence on my padawan.” 

“Anakin?” Maul tilts his head, then a smirk spreads slowly over his face. “I suppose so. He _likes_ me.” (On a good day, he’d ask what sort of influence. It’s not a good day, and Maul wants to draw blood. He has to settle for sharpened words.) A part of Qui-Gon wants to knock that smirk off his face. Plo, apparently, has other priorities. Or maybe a different approach to the same one. 

“Oh? Good, I was hoping he’d make some friends,” he says. “It’s quite important, I have found, to talk to others and see who they are.” Maul blinks, and Plo does the kel-dor equivalent of smiling encouragingly in a way that’s palpable through the Force. “Quite important, wouldn’t you say, Master Jinn?”

Oh, _this_ is how he’s to be used as an object lesson. Qui-Gon shoots him an exasperated look, which seems to make no impact on Plo. (There is a specific state of mind and presentation that certain Jedi take when dealing with very young children. Children, after all, feel a lot, often, and a lot of it shallowly, and it doesn’t do to get caught up in that. Plo has been practicing it regularly, dealing with Anakin, and now he has set it firmly in place once again.) 

“Yes, er, keeping company when needed is a good thing,” Qui-Gon attempts. 

“And talking to people, specifically,” says Plo. “After all, that is why the Jedi are _many_.” Maul’s smirk grows enough to show teeth.

“Is the Master Jedi referring to something specific, _Master Jinn_?” he asks, tone dripping with false politeness. 

“I am sure he refers to the tendency of the Jedi to solve our own problems,” Qui-Gon replies evenly. “Even if it is not the most efficient of solutions.”

“So long as the problems are solved, in the end,” says Plo. That stings like a blow, but he doesn’t leave Qui-Gon any time to dwell on it. “I suppose Anakin has been seeking help with his meditation—it is often difficult to clear one’s mind. Isn’t it?”

“... For some,” Maul half-answers. “The Force isn’t still and silent either.”

“But we must be, if we are to hear it,” Qui-Gon says. The Sith apprentice scoffs, and something clicks into place in Qui-Gon's mind. “It was about Master Dooku, wasn’t it?” Maul has the gall to clap, slowly and deliberately. 

“Clever Jedi!” His accent tends too Core-World for him to drawl, but the attempt is clearly there. “That child is clever too. He knows the right questions to ask.”

“And you know the answers, I’m sure?” Plo prompts. 

“I—” Maul pauses. His mocking anger wavers. “Some of them. He asked how it was the makashi-juur could do what he did, and the answer was power. _Midwanjontû châtsatul nu asha. Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak. Wonoksh Qyâsik nun_.” Qui-Gon can recognize the language, but not parse out the words. They sound more like a threat than like a mantra. 

“I can’t imagine Anakin could pronounce that,” says Plo dryly, and the Sith apprentice doesn’t tamp down on the wave of agreement quite soon enough. 

“Through power, one gains victory. Through victory, one breaks one’s chains,” Maul translates. There’s a third piece, Qui-Gon thinks, but the young man folds his arms and turns away. (He can sit cross-legged on the floor and tell Anakin that the code of the Sith says the Force will free them, but it is something quite different to say so through a cell door to his captors, knowing he isn’t free here and and will not be free beyond the Temple’s walls and perhaps never was free at all. In Sith, the words are a recitation. In Basic, they feel like a lie. What chains have the Sith of this era ever broken?) 

“Ah,” says Plo. “But it was other people’s chains Master Dooku sought to break, was it not?” 

“Yes,” Maul admits. “But not only. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“No—” Qui-Gon begins at the same time that Plo gives a definitive:

“Yes.” Glaring has no impact, once again. (Plo has quickly grasped a loose end of poorly translated and ancient doctrine: power breaks chains but can also apply them, it is simply a matter of who wields it and to what end. That, likely, is a lesson Anakin will grasp quicker than the technicalities of meditating.) “Do you read Sith as well as speak it?” It’s a bit of a non-sequitur, which seems to throw Maul for enough of a loop that he forgets to be angry and brags instead. 

“Better than my master does.” (Of course he does. He’s learned it nearly all his life.) 

“A useful skill. I believe there are some translations in the Archives that Master Dooku had been working on. If we escort you there I’m sure there won’t be a problem with you checking them over.”

“Won’t there?” Maul asks, and the words drop into a growl at the end, even as Qui-Gon moves to unlock the cell. 

“If you try to run, I’ll carry you,” he answers, and hears Plo stifle a chuckle, and then he does unlock the cell and Maul lunges for his throat with a bread knife. 

They disarm him of course, though not before he leaves a deep cut down the side of Qui-Gon’s head, slices both his palms, and stabs Plo in the arm, and if Qui-Gon throws him at a wall a bit harder than is strictly polite he’s going to use that as an excuse. Maul stays where he’s thrown instead of picking up the fight again, and it’s despair that twists his Force signature far more so than anger. 

They mean to try again the next day, only to find the cell empty and their prisoner asleep in the Archive’s stacks. Qui-Gon opens his mouth to say something — he doesn’t remember what, later on — when every alarm in the Temple goes off at once. 

——————

There is a saying that is repeated in many cultures that have studied warfare about the importance of information in battle. Qui-Gon learned one version as a padawan from an Echani wardancer: _know yourself first, and know your enemy, and face your battles without fear; know yourself first and tread unknowing, find victory as likely as defeat; know neither your battles nor yourself, and lay down your arms—you have lost before beginning_. As he runs from the Archive, veers around a swarm of terrified initiates, loses Plo in the crowd, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Maul materializes at his elbow, it strikes him he is getting dangerously close to the last category. 

“What is happening?” the Sith apprentice asks. There’s no indication now that two minutes prior he was hugging a datapad in his sleep. 

“Intruders,” Qui-Gon says shortly. There’s just so much background noise—the alarms are one thing, but the panic is quite another. _Monsters_ dozens of voices warn, and others say _bounty hunters_ and others yet say _the Sith_ , and that’s just the ones that think they know instead of asking. He tries to reach for Obi-Wan’s stable presence, but his former apprentice is somewhere beyond the chaos, too far to reach. (He’s offworld, outside the sector, on a diplomatic mission meant halfway as a test of his skill. If he feels the pull and the distant echo of what’s happening at the Temple, it doesn’t show on his face as he bows politely to the ambassador and introduces himself. _Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight_ still feels like a lie, or at least a hyperbole, but that’s half of diplomacy on any given day, isn’t it? Lie or not, it falls from his lips easily.) 

“How many?” Maul’s yellow eyes flicker left and right, but there’s no break in the din through which to sense them. Qui-Gon shrugs. 

“I’m going to the gate,” he says instead, and Maul gives a curt nod and follows as if he hadn’t been attempting to stab him with cutlery very recently. 

A ball of sickly green fire narrowly misses Qui-Gon’s head and singes his hair, which he doesn’t notice because he’s too busy being hit with a wave of _wrongness_. Three figures are standing in the courtyard, and they feel like death by a rotting plague. It’s a portent, Qui-Gon thinks in the mad and instinctual way he sometimes thinks things. It’s a portent of corruption and decimation, the end of all things, the death of the Republic coming not with bombs and open war with slow pestilence that leaves a shambling empty corpse of what once was—

“Master Jinn!” a girl’s voice calls. He blinks. Three figures are standing in the courtyard. They’re wearing horned masks and carrying staves that flicker with green energy, and their malicious intent is palpable. So is the smell of rotting. A mirialan girl is standing beside him, her black cloth headdress on crooked and a look of intense determination in her blue eyes. “Master Jinn, we should be able to flank them.” His brain identifies her as Nara, which is definitely a childhood nickname rather than something she’d go by now. 

“What do they want?” he asks instead. Nara shakes her head. 

“They are waiting,” she says. “I think it is a distraction, but so long as they stay here they will serve their purpose. They draw attention.” 

“Right,” says Qui-Gon. What are they drawing attention _from_? The only way to find out is to stop the distraction. “Are you armed?” Nara waves her lightsaber.

“ _I’m_ not,” Maul supplies. Nara tilts her head. 

“That sounds like a problem for you specifically,” she answers almost sweetly. Maul glowers, then turns his attention back to the interlopers 

“Fine. I don’t _need_ a lightsaber.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I drafted this scene several weeks ago, before _that bit_ of TCW came out..


	17. Chapter 17

The matter is approached tactically, which is to say Qui-Gon bites back the visceral disgust response and walks directly at the intruders in a way that costs him much of the hair and beard on the left side of his face and nearly costs him an eye, while Nara and Maul climb walls and proceed to fling themselves bodily to the attack. Their enemies clearly are not attuned to the Force, because they don’t see the attack coming. Nara only draws her saber to slice the intruders’ staves. (She’s quite proud of her hand-to-hand combat skills, and no one remembers now that Luminara Unduli was once fragile, dainty little Nara. She’s still dainty, to an extent, but has banished fragility.) Maul still manages to impale one of them on half a staff, then recoils in disgust at the smell of his victim’s blood. (It takes quite a bit to make someone like Maul recoil in disgust.) Nara wrinkles her nose, then yanks the horned mask off of one of the survivors to reveal dead blue eyes and skin mottled by rot. The creature leers at her, and something pings in the back of Qui-Gon’s mind. 

Baltizaar. There had been a battle there some seven years ago, with the Jedi reinforcing locals against a cult—a battle that had been sorely misjudged. Qui-Gon himself hadn’t been there, but he’d heard the news, he’d heard of the mass casualties taken before the Bando Gora had at last fled, about how the cultists had looked like dead men walking and fought, reports had said, like sorcerers. (He’d heard, too, that his sister-padawan, Dooku’s then-student, had been among the dead. The information had passed over him like water, because he’d had all of one mental image of Komari—a quiet, withdrawn girl standing at Dooku’s side with her hands clasped while Dooku picked yet another argument. A loss, to be sure, any death was, but hardly one that registered.)

“The Bando Gora,” he says aloud. “Be careful.” _Know yourself first, and know your enemy, and face your battles without fear._ But he doesn’t know this enemy. He doesn’t know why or how they’d nearly routed Jedi on Baltizaar. He doesn’t know why they’re here. Nara nods and draws her saber again. 

“Talk or die,” she tells the captive bluntly. The man (he looks like he could have been human once, but it’s almost impossible to tell now) wheezes a laugh.

“Have it your way,” he rasps, and drops himself onto the blade. Nara yelps and is yanked sharply backwards as the corpse falls right where she was standing a moment before, its face distorted in a hideous grin. The last remaining one laughs too. They’re a distraction, Qui-Gon reminds himself, and glances between the remaining cultist, Nara, and Maul. (Life is supposed to be sacred, but sometimes there isn’t time, is there?) He grabs Nara by the arm and tells her they need to go check the creche, and she goes ashen with fear and runs with him. 

(Maul kills the last cultist before they’re three steps gone, then runs in the other direction. He’s trained for this, after all, he is a hunter, a killer, and now he has Master Jinn’s tacit permission to act.) 

——————

Nara tackles a cultist through a broken window in a creche house, kicks him in the head hard enough to drive the horns on his mask into the ground, then makes a polite bow and apology to the wounded crechemaster. 

“I did not mean to startle,” she says flatly. 

The crechemaster assures her she wasn’t startling at all, then asks a bit shakily if Knight Unduli could remove the cultist before he comes to. Qui-Gon ties the man’s arms behind his back (the joints don’t seem to work right and he tries very hard not to think of it) and leaves him on a bench. Nara (Unduli?) looks dubious. 

“Master Jinn? Shouldn’t we…” She hesitates. (Shouldn’t we keep watch? Shouldn’t we interrogate him? Luminara doesn’t like to question her superiors, it’s not proper, but surely leaving a person—even a person like that, because the cultist’s aura turns her stomach and the thought of what he may have wanted in the creche will haunt her—to death isn’t the right thing to do.) 

“If anything happens, you can blame me,” Qui-Gon says blithely. “Leave him, there’s more of them to track down.” There are—too many willing to die for their cause and no sign of a leader, but at least that means they are more easily taken out than they could be. Qui-Gon and Unduli are the first into battle, but they are far from the only ones. (They aren’t the only ones who recall Baltizaar either, and if some knights who lost friends there are a little harsher, a little angrier, a little too slow to move away when their enemies pick death instead of capture, who is to say?) 

Frustrated thoughts swirl in Qui-Gon’s mind, battlefields and clone armies and weapons of war. The Bando Gora had killed Jedi on Baltizaar, after all, so any blood spilled (and each kill is a ripple in the Force, amplified by the Temple itself) is righteous revenge for the fallen— No, that’s not right. The Jedi don’t dwell on revenge. Any blood spilled is necessary, though, and better the cultists than the younglings. 

(It wasn’t long ago that he’d seethed while listening to the Council debate clone soldiers, but were he to think of it now it would seem a different lifetime. The war that Damask and Sifo-Dyas had foretold seems certain now, somehow, as if something had begun that couldn’t be stopped. The truth is, nothing has changed on a galactic scale in this time, not really, everything is proceeding along the same paths it has been for decades, if not centuries. The galaxy doesn’t stop for fallen students or witches with holoprojectors, not really. What has changed is primarily Qui-Gon’s perspective—where once there were myths and legends to study and orders to rail against in half-hypothetical rebellion, now there are enemies that are real and solid and deadly and prophecies that come true in the form of nebula-bright children.) 

There is one surviving Bando Gora member in the end, one that looks to have been a twi’lek once upon a time who struggles lamely in Windu’s grip, and the Temple grounds are littered with corpses. It is quiet now, but it’s not the peaceful sort of quiet as much as the sound of no one screaming anymore, and the smell of rotting permeates the air and sinks into the stone walls. Even Maul, when he reappears at Qui-Gon’s side, has drawn his cloak over his nose and mouth. (He’s spent the last five minutes trying to scrub the smell of rotting blood from off his gloves, too, to less effect than he would like.) Unduli shivers, and a red-skinned mikkian girl places a comforting hand on her shoulder briefly. 

“You will tell us what you were after,” Windu tells the cultist, his voice dripping ice. 

“Or you will force me?” 

“Yes,” Windu says flatly. “There are many things one can do besides kill.”

“We want nothing, we seek nothing, we are nothing,” the cultist intones. “Do what you will.” Windu frowns minimally. 

“Have it your way. Jinn, Master Poof, we’ll need your assistance.” Windu’s expertise doesn’t lie in mind tricks, and it is to some extent an honor to be called up alongside Yarael Poof, but Qui-Gon wants less to do with the contents of the cultist’s head than he wants to do with the contents of Maul’s. Speaking of, he nearly elbows the Sith apprentice as he turns, because Maul has edged rather closer to him than he’d anticipated. Still, the wary crowd parts for him and he stands between Windu and the quermian master and reaches out when prompted. 

“ _You will tell us what you were after_ ,” he orders, and reminds himself that he has touched corpses and put his hands in decomposing matter and really this is no different. (The Bando Gora worship the Force—the Jedi would say they worship the Dark Side, but that is not quite the whole truth. They see divinity in this thing that connects all of the living, and they seek transcendence in transcending it. There is no death, there is only the Force, the Jedi say. The Bando Gora add this: there is no death, there is no life, there is only the Force and we are its vessels.) They press and the walls of the cultist’s mind fall like so much rotting wood falling to dust, and he shudders and laughs a high, mad laugh. 

“Do you know the color of the sky?” he asks. 

“ _You will tell us what you were after_ ,” Qui-Gon repeats. There’s nothing left to push at. The mad twi’lek raises his head and looks past them, up, up, up into the clear and cloudless sky above. 

“You think it is blue, don’t you?” he continues. “But it isn’t anymore. The blue sky is falling, and it’ll fall on you all. And when the death of the blue sky comes, that which is will end and that which is dead will see. And what color will the sky be then?” 

“You haven’t answered the question, you know,” Master Poof says, almost gently. The cultist lowers his gaze to stare at him with blank incomprehension. 

“The Force is the answer. We want nothing. We seek nothing. We are nothing. We are the Bando Gora, and you will be buried.”

“By whom?” Poof prompts, but their captive laughs again.

“Who controls the changing of seasons or the flow of your blood? We are the dead, and without the blue sky you are nothing.” His laughter turns to a wheeze as the energy seems to drain from him. “The question is what comes after.” And then he drops, limp and silent. (He lives, in theory, another two days before his damaged organs give out the rest of the way, but he neither wakes nor speaks again.)

———————

It’s strange, no one knows what to do with the bodies. It has been so very long since people have died in large quantities at the Temple, after all, and even a cursory investigation shows that the Bando Gora tore a swath of destruction through Coruscant’s underbelly to reach the Temple in the first place. The survivors in the lower city are terrified and the dead are rotting too quickly. Jedi healers go out to treat burns that don’t stop spreading and infected cuts that don’t respond to bacta, and many of them find locked doors instead of patients. Qui-Gon is sent to help open doors, that’s his forte, so he spends days on end trudging through filth and pleading with people who really should know the Jedi are on their side. Here, deep beneath the city, no one can see the sky, and he wonders if they would even notice it falling.

(History suggests they would not. For people like the denizens of Coruscant’s undercity, it doesn’t much matter who is chancellor or whether there is a war far away or who commands armies or if there are emperors or warlords or sorcerers, or what color philosophers deem the sky to be. Their lives and their sufferings would be effectively unchanged, unless some third party sought to burn Coruscant from below. It isn’t only they who live like this, of course. There are many many places in the galaxy, even within the Republic, where both chancellors and credits are worth nothing, and different planets have different atmospheres. On Dathomir, for instance, today’s sky is hidden in red smog, and witches whisper to one another of prophecies and omens. But that’s quite far away, for now.) 

They wind up burning the bodies in a secluded place behind the Temple, the cultists and their victims in separate pyres. That’s the right thing to do, maybe, the honorable thing to do. (Maul thinks the flames flicker green if he looks at them too long, but that seems like a pointless thing to bring up. The darkness beneath the Temple revels in the sacrifice it has been given, and grows some incremental amount. The tides of the Force are shifting ever more towards the Dark Side, and for the first time in his life Maul cannot take comfort in that knowledge. The question, the cultist had said, is what comes _after_ , and there is no after that he can grasp. There is the grand plan, there is a _before_ , there is the certainty that is his master’s success and then… what? He has been thinking entirely too much.) 

Within the Temple, injuries heal more quickly. While they do, the Council is called to order, and Windu paces the room with his arms folded and glares ice at anyone who comes too close. 

“We have to act,” he says curtly when the members are more or less assembled. Qui-Gon is among the many packed against the wall listening, and with a glitch and a sputter a hologram of Dooku appears at an odd angle on a table. This room isn’t meant to hold so many people, but lately there has been comfort in the crowd. “The Temple was breached,” Windu elaborates for him. “Bando Gora.” 

Even in the poor-quality image, Dooku tenses visibly. (He knows more about the battle of Baltizaar than most of the room does, and certainly more about the leadup to it. He remembers now, as he sometimes does, the look on little Komari’s face when he’d told her he was terminating her apprenticeship, and he remembers hoping rather distantly that she’d prove him wrong, and he remembers the report of her death. The thought that he’d doomed the girl eats at him, but surely there was nothing else he could have done. She would not have passed her trials, she would not have been a knight...) He asks calmly about casualties and listens to the report with his jaw clenched. 

“Do you have a plan?” he asks. “Stamping out criminal enterprises is something the senate can likely support, if you need it.” (Windu has a half dozen plans, because he has spent his life learning to curtail righteous anger with philosophy and rationality and tactical thinking. He’s certainly learned that better than Dooku has, because Dooku briefly considers the idea of carpet-bombing a moon while Windu considers how to get medical treatment to those more regularly exposed to the Bando Gora’s raids.They were both raised in the Temple, so they both think of it as mitigation of harm.)

“We can handle this ourselves,” Windu says coldly. “There is no need for a repeat of Baltizaar.” 

“I wasn’t _on_ Baltizaar,” Dooku snaps. (He has missed the point entirely.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Death cults! Strange prophecies! Questionable decision-making! Things weren't all chill until the Clone Wars happened, after all.


	18. Chapter 18

In the end, Windu wins the day and a formal investigation is set in motion—rules and charts are drawn up, teams of four are sent out to trace the Bando Gora back up the Hydian Way while medical experts follow in their wake. Qui-Gon volunteers for the mission, an idea that is shot down faster and more unanimously than any other thing he has proposed to the Council, and there are some impressive precedents on that front. Windu looks a few seconds off from ordering him back to his quarters like one would an unruly padawan, so Qui-Gon beats a tactical retreat. 

(They do send Obi-Wan, though. They catch him as soon as he steps foot back on Coruscant and bundle him off to do reconnaissance with Knights Krell and Unduli and Master Tapal. Obi-Wan is a good and dutiful Jedi, after all, and they need the ones who can keep their heads in the face of chaos.) 

“What will they do?” Maul asks, later, when the Temple is half empty and Qui-Gon is absolutely not sulking in in the training halls. “When they find the Bando Gora?”

“Stop them,” Qui-Gon non-answers. Maul frowns at him but doesn’t press the issue. 

(He’s thinking too much. Will they be killed or will they be healed? Can they be healed? Anything can be killed, but Maul knows of no power than can restore something dead and putrescent to healthy life. A limb in that state would be amputated and replaced, but what of a consciousness? And does that same corruption plague the Sith and rot them from within, leave them with corpse-skin and burned out eyes like in the visions he has seen? But Master Jinn doesn’t seem to know, and for all the wealth of knowledge contained in the Archives there is no simple answer to be found about what the Dark Side does or is. It has to be something, though, doesn’t it? Even if it is everything and the end of everything, it still must be quantifiable and reachable and understandable. Damask had tried to quantify it, but Damask is dead and beyond Maul’s reach…) 

“What would you do?” he asks after a while. Qui-Gon shrugs and picks up a bo staff. 

“It doesn’t matter, I won’t be there.” 

——————

There isn’t only darkness to be found, though, and the work of the Jedi never ends. Plo Koon sets off for Shili with Anakin in tow, the boy’s still-new padawan braid sticking out directly sideways from his head, and Qui-Gon tags along as far as Champala, where he is apparently needed to sort out environmental violations. 

(On Shili there is civil unrest, as there often is, but there is also a child who lights up in the Force like pure white kyber. It is an honor to have a child go to the Jedi, and little Ahsoka’s family has expected this for a long time. She is a sweet girl, she is loved, but on Shili she will never quite be among her people and they know and accept this. Plo Koon with his mask and his heavy cloak and his strange manner still somehow seems familiar to her, and when he reaches out his clawed hand she feels a rush of _same as me_. The human boy he says is his student is _same_ too, and once she overcomes her initial shyness Ahsoka eagerly babbles at him and he just as eagerly babbles back. She’s not even four, and the words will fade from her vocabulary in due time before they are relearned, but when she curls up on a speeder seat between the strange Jedi and his student she calls them _uncle_ and _cousin_ , and Anakin grins so big his face hurts because he’s never ever had a cousin before.) 

Champala is a water world and something of a tourist trap in high summer. There airstrip where Qui-Gon lands is supposed to be out of the way — he has a job to do that does not, in fact, involve tripping over civilians — and somehow he still runs into a gaggle of students in beachwear and a very adamant chagrian with her lethorns wrapped in bright scarves who was hawking some sort of snack food. (The chagrians, living most of their lives in their homeworld’s salty waters, have a limited sense of taste and overall care little for food. Tourists are another matter, so an impressive economy has sprung up around the idea of traditional and local food tailored exclusively to offworlders.) He’s alone this time, because this isn’t supposed to be a complex mission and because he’s been banned in all but writing from taking anything Sith-related out of the Temple and that apparently includes Maul. 

(Maul, instead, is haunting the Archives again. He is a diligent student, after all, and knowledge is power and power brings victory and Master Nu has only banned him from two specific rooms that are locked anyway. That’s a limitation he can accept, at least for now, and if he sometimes gets distracted from his cross-referencing and spends two hours reading about the exploits of the heroes of the New Sith Wars, then, well, it’s research too. It’s important to know one’s enemy. Maul’s been taught that too. He expects those records to gloss over or hide the cruelties he knows those long-dead enemies to have committed, but finds a diligent historian has noted every last one, every last burned temple, every last shining Jedi knight fallen to the temptations of blood and destruction, and left a smattering of footnotes referencing similar earlier things. Those records, he quickly learns, are behind one of the locked doors, accessible only to venerable masters. The Jedi think it safer that way; the New Sith Wars were wars with carefully delineated sides, and the Sith were the Sith and the Sith were destroyed, such things make fair lessons. The fall of Exar Kun, the Jedi Civil War, that which came before and that which resulted from it, these are things the Jedi do not wish to teach of except to say that Revan was _saved_ and the Republic was _saved_ and evil surely lost the day. They do not wish, after all, to see the shadows of Sith Lords in the faces of their own students. Such things are understandable.)

On Champala, Qui-Gon bites back the urge to tell the vendor to _reevaluate her life choices_ when she tries to sell him some sort of sweet snack cake and makes a quick escape from the landing strip, only to end up knee-deep in mud before he even meets his contact. He pulls himself free with a grimace and makes eye contact with a speckled, reptile-like creature perched in one of the heavy-leafed trees. (Animals are often drawn to those with an affinity for the Force. Sentients, too, find it ever so easy to trust Force users, especially those they can’t identify as such. It is a feeling more than anything else, a fundamental inkling that people like Qui-Gon are vaguely familiar and part of some same overarching group. Wild animals lounge and play at Qui-Gon’s feet or gladly carry Obi-Wan away from danger, little Ahsoka and her family know, all at once, that Plo Koon is no stranger for all his strangeness, bickering senators find themselves in agreement that Chancellor Palpatine has, after all, their best interests at heart, and if he sits very still somewhere outdoors and quiet butterflies will land on every single one of Maul’s sharp horns. These are all manifestations of the same shared trait, for better or for worse.) The creature blinks down at him, clearly curious, and Qui-Gon smiles (or rather, sort of grimaces) up at it.

“Hello there, don’t suppose you could have warned me?” he asks dryly. The creature stares for a moment longer then shrieks and launches itself at Qui-Gon’s face, toppling him backwards into the mud yet again. (The fact that it does so in thoroughly affectionate a manner does not, in fact, change the muddy side of things.) And then it bounds off, leaving Qui-Gon with, among other things, a muddy and grimy lightsaber and short-circuiting commlink. It isn’t a good look, and the bespectacled (or, technically, be-goggled) chagrian who meets him at the water’s edge visibly bites back laughter at the sight of him.

“A pleasure to meet you, Master Jedi. Did they remove the signs at the airfield again?” she asks. Qui-Gon ignores the flicker of irritation he feels at the jibe. Signs do and should, after all, apply even to Jedi, so he forces a thin smile.

“No, I just crossed paths with some… enthusiastic local fauna, that is all.” The chagrian giggles aloud this time. 

“Happens to the best of us. They have grown used to tourists, alas, and now they are fearless.” She pauses. “At least the tourists and visitors mean them no harm, of course, so overall it’s for the best.”

“Quite,” says Qui-Gon, and surreptitiously pulls some fern-like leaves from his hair. 

“Sorry—manners,” says the chagrian. “I’m Else Eddas—Professor Eddas, I suppose, on the flimsiwork, but Else to my friends. I’m the one who called you down here.”

Eddas escorts Qui-Gon down the beach, where throngs of tourists slowly give way to locals going about their business, and gives her side of the story. She is, she says, one of a group of seven researchers studying an underwater cave system that contains a number of rare species found nowhere else on the planet, let alone the galaxy. A mining operation on the other side of the cape, however, was causing earthquakes that could disrupt and damage the cave system. 

“Vertus—Verday? The company’s called something like that, not that it matters. It’s operated by offworld interests, so we couldn’t take it up in the local courts,” Eddas explains, waving a hand in frustration. 

“Do you know which ones?” Qui-Gon asks. He isn’t sure whether he’s hoping for another Damask subsidiary or not. Eddas shakes her head.

“Some numbered holdco registered in … Eeropha, I think? Just far enough to make it someone else’s problem, anyway, can’t see why.” 

Further attempts to drag details out of her are met with similar failure. Eddas clearly doesn’t care a whit about who her opponents in this matter are as much as she cares that they’re stopped, but that’s a problem in and of itself—he’d have to take a different approach depending on who the company’s owners were and what they wanted, and if he finds himself running up against the IGBC again… Well, if he does, then he’ll handle it. 

There is a distant, unpleasant odor in the air, like the smell of dead fish, and it sets an irrational feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Logically speaking, Qui-Gon supposes it is to be expected in a place like this, and as soon as he thinks that a tremor shakes the ground. It doesn’t feel like much, exactly, but small things can add up over time. Eddas pauses in the middle of an excited speech about… corals, maybe? to scowl and glare across the choppy water. 

“They were asked to stop for the investigation,” she mutters. In the wake of the tremors, the dead fish smell has only intensified, and Qui-Gon sees Eddas wrinkle her nose, distressed. Not normal, then.

“What is that smell?” he asks. Eddas blinks, flinches. 

“Refuse, probably. There’s a fishing community here.” She doesn’t believe it, that much is clear from her face let alone from the Force, and when Qui-Gon suggests they pick up the pace she breaks into a near jog towards the research center. Qui-Gon follows her and tries to project calm, even though he has a dawning realization of what he will find.

The center is one of the old-fashioned, partially submerged buildings dotting the coast. With the tide coming in, more than half the door is underwater, but it is slightly ajar. The smell of dead fish and the beginnings of putrefaction billows from within and a viscous, black liquid leaks out, a steady trickle that stains the seawater. Above the door, a word is crudely carved in Aurebesh: **S K Y F A L L**. 

To her credit, Eddas doesn’t scream. She stares for a long moment with her hand clasped over her mouth, then sways on her feet, chokes, and falls in a dead faint in Qui-Gon’s arms.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content warning in this one for rather gross descriptions of dead bodies. If you want to avoid that, skip from "the rot here is something else" to "but Obi-Wan is far afield".** Thanks!

The proper authorities should be called, but it’s rather clear that Qui-Gon himself is the proper authorities at the moment. He sets Eddas up against a large plant, steels himself ( _there is only peace, there is only the Force_ ) and wades into the laboratory with his sleeve drawn over his nose. 

The place is a shambles. Broken machinery and smouldering droids bob in the filthy water, and above Qui-Gon’s head the lights flicker and buzz helplessly. There is death here, he can sense it: death and pain and terror. He shuts his eyes and reaches out with the Force— _anyone still here? anything still here? I’m here to help_. There is no answer, just the echo of screaming. He walks deeper, following the leak. It’s oil, he thinks, though his first thought had been blood, rotting blood like that of the cultists in the Temple; the rot here is something else. 

He finds the bodies three rooms later, rotting too soon and torn apart as if they had been savaged by an animal. (That’s not quite right. Animals kill with purpose, even the monstrosities wrought from Sith alchemy, even rancors. It is when they are under the control of other things that they sow destruction for destruction’s sake, and even then they do not stoop to torture. Whatever was here did.) The slow flow of oil seeps through a crack in the floor where someone drove something sharp deep, deep down. This is, he thinks, almost certainly the work of the Bando Gora—the same echo of wrongness lingers here, the same stench of corruption, (the same falling sky,) but what could they possibly have wanted here? 

He turns to the bodies. There are five of them, all in similar states. One nearest him is draped over a desk, ribcage cracked open and face damaged beyond recognition. It’s fascinating, in a cold sort of way, to see the accelerated rot spread from the wounds on outward rather than in any uniform manner. Was the weapon used tainted in some way, is it some strange working of the Force…? Were Obi-Wan here, they’d likely distract themselves from the grim reality by talking through the possibilities, but Obi-Wan is far afield. 

(Obi-Wan is following a trail of destruction too, and it leaves him cold. Beside him, Knight Unduli is carefully expressionless, but she has yet to fully master hiding the worry and distress that flicker through her presence. Knight Krell isn’t bothering to try, and he leans away from the bodies of the Bando Gora’s latest victims here with palpable disgust. 

“Well, let’s get this over with,” says Obi-Wan, as much to himself as to them, and kneels beside the bodies. There will be time, he supposes, to be sick later.)

So Qui-Gon catalogues injuries and takes stills and marks down notes in a datapad that’s somehow still muddy, and feels Eddas’s approach in time to catch her before she stumbles into the room. The young chagrian is still unsteady on her feet and looks up at Qui-Gon wild-eyed and despairing when he takes her by the shoulders. 

“My—my friends— my coworkers—” she stammers, gesturing vaguely past him. There’s a dawning realization to her, reality setting in, and Qui-Gon can’t summon up any remotely comforting thing to say. 

“They’re dead,” he says instead. Eddas makes a low noise of despair. “They were attacked. You said there were seven of you—including yourself?”

“I—yes,” Eddas shakes her head sharply, then runs through a list of names. Qui-Gon can match them to signatures in his file, but not to bodies. 

“There are five of them in there, and you out here with me. One missing.” It takes a moment for his words to sink in, but when they do Eddas recoils as if she’s been hit.

“Missing?” she echoes. “That’s not—whom would they—who is it?” But he doesn’t have any answers for her. 

The droids end up doing identity verification from blood samples. (Each one takes several attempts, it is difficult to draw an uncorrupted sample.) Sitting on the beach with her face pressed against her knees, Eddas looks very young indeed. Grief churns around her like a storm, so Qui-Gon sits down beside her and places (what he hopes is) a comforting hand on her shoulder and waits for the droids to finish. At least the oil leak (a drum of the stuff lodged under the laboratory somehow) is dealt with faster. 

———————

The missing researcher is called Kat Doraas. She is, Qui-Gon recalls vaguely, one of the more outspoken ones—the file had included some scathing opinion pieces penned by Dr. Doraas, and there had been some mention of a holonet interview involving a thrown glass. The news makes Eddas melt down the rest of the way, and she spends the next hour between sobbing incoherence and desperate accusations of the mining operation and its owners. As Qui-Gon foists her off on her hastily summoned relatives, she grabs him by the sleeve. 

“She was right— Doraas— the Jedi— all of this. You have to see, they’re bringing the darkness with them!”

“That’s what I’m here for,” says Qui-Gon, and he tries not to think if he could have caught an earlier transport, if he could have gotten there sooner, if he could have saved lives. If there’s one thing that doesn’t save lives, it’s dwelling on hypotheticals. 

He asks the droids to see if anyone matching Doraas’s description has left the planet and gets a ride to the miner’s headquarters on the far side of the cape, and if he skips straight to the mind tricks this time, if he pushes a little harder, if he says _move quickly and don’t talk_ , it’s purely to save time— Doraas could be alive, after all, she could be held captive, time could be of the essence and so much has been wasted already. Besides, he lets the boatman leave, and he could’ve forced him to stay, doesn’t that count for something? Vertae Mining Corporation greets Qui-Gon with open doors, polite smiles, and armed guards. 

“One can’t,” says the chagrian clerk rather blandly, “be too careful.” Under the polite exterior, though, his fear is palpable in the Force. But what does he fear? Surely not Qui-Gon himself, after all, because the Jedi dangle somewhere between respected and accepted in places like this. 

“Surely,” says Qui-Gon. “Has there been much trouble here lately?” A torrent of assurances that everything is absolutely fine and why would anyone think otherwise, Champala is peaceful and the only trouble has been some bureaucratic back-and-forth with the scientists down the way is his response. Qui-Gon fixes a smile on his face. 

“So why the guards?” 

“My superiors sent them down. I think they think this is more of a problem than I think it is.” The guard to the left of them huffs a laugh beneath her helmet. 

“Not that I mind the paid vacation,” she says. “Nothing harsher here than a strongly worded letter.”

“Which is I’m sure why you were called in,” says the clerk quickly. “Professor Doraas must have gotten on someone important’s nerves.”

“Quite,” says Qui-Gon, and the word hangs in the air for a moment. “Professor Doraas is missing, and her coworkers are dead. I rather think that’s harsher than a strongly worded letter.”

“Dead?!” the guard asks sharply. “What do you mean, dead?” Qui-Gon considers launching into a list of synonyms, but it seems inappropriate. 

“Murdered,” he clarifies instead. “If any of you know anything about this, tell me.” There’s a long moment’s silence. The clerk gawks, and finally it’s the guard who speaks. (She’s not military, officially, there is no military in the Republic, officially. As Dooku wisely noted, individuals can sometimes do what institutions cannot: she and her colleagues are a private defense force like many fielded by the galaxy’s euphemistically termed business interests. The use of droids for such things has become common of late, but some remain old-fashioned and recruit people.)

“Murdered? But what purpose would that serve?” she asks.

“They—they were trying to hold up development, sure,” the clerk agrees, “but we would have won! The bosses were sure of that! Doraas had a big mouth, but the contracts and the laws are on our side!”

“Your bosses said so? If they were so sure, would they send you protection?” Qui-Gon presses. The clerk flails slightly, but both guards shake their heads no.

“Were combat-trained,” says the woman. “They were expecting something to go wrong. Though... I can’t see why this of all things.”

“Look, Jedi,” says the clerk hurriedly. “Look—I’ve got proof—documents, they’ll show we had no quarrel—well, some quarrel, but not like that—we could sink their careers, there was no reason to sink them!”

“What do you mean, sink their careers?” Qui-Gon asks. “What sort of information did you have?”

“Not me,” the clerk assured him quickly. “One of the higher-ups, I don’t know who, he’s been in touch with someone inside that lab and from what I heard there was dirt enough to bring their whole enterprise down. Forged data, I think, but the bosses kept it hush-hush because they wanted the whole thing sorted quietly. There!” He fishes a datapad from his desk and flourishes it victoriously, then hands it over when Qui-Gon gestures. “And now people are dead. None of that was supposed to happen.” There’s a vaguely familiar logo stamped on the back of the datapad, but Qui-Gon can’t place it.

“Do any of you know who your employers actually are?” he asks instead.

“All my documents say Vertae MC on them,” says the clerk quickly. “I don’t know about these two—“

“Four-two-dorn-three-three-wesk-zerek-krill-three Second Holdco Incorporated,” recites the guard. "Not my job to know what it's holding, except my paycheck."

“Any people? Do the bosses have names?” 

“Paystubs attached to a holonet address,” says the other guard suddenly. The more talkative one nods. 

“There’s a command structure offworld,” she adds, “But I don’t know who’s who outside of it.”

“There’s… there’s middlemen,” says the clerk dubiously. “Droids, and things. Whoever’s the boss of the bosses wants his ass covered.” He does eventually provide names, with the caveat that he thinks they’re pseudonyms, and is _convinced_ to let Qui-Gon search the building. There’s nothing to be found, of course—no secret basement, no rooms behind bookcases, these things never happen at this level of a pseudonyms-and-droids type of company. The oil rig deeper out at sea looks inactive, and employee files indicate the miners are all locals. 

Whatever is happening here isn’t local, he knows that for certain. He can see the shadowy hand of outsiders here, some sort of deeper game and darker goal than a singular oil rig. Even so, he makes the clerk escort him out to the rig and searches it from top to bottom. It looks exactly like several others he has seen, though without even a shred of personal effects. 

“I sent them home,” says the clerk uncomfortably. “Must’ve been two, three days ago? We were shutting down until the opposition stopped. Guess they cleaned up.” 

But it’s too clean, too neat, too perfect, too jarring a contrast with the horror and havoc he had seen so nearby, and he is brought back to solid ground without any answers. Well, with one: whatever has become of Doraas, she is still on Champala.

————————

The Vertae miners have little of use to say, though they all agree they’d been sent home some days prior and given the opportunity to collect their belongings. Most of them are eager to return to work. Two had met their opponents, briefly, when Doraas and two of her fellows had turned up on the rig a week prior, but they didn’t know her and couldn’t identify who’d come with her. No, they hadn’t visited the research facility, they had no reason to and they’d been assured the matter was in hand. No, they hadn’t seen anything or anyone strange in town—just offworlder tourists and Qui-Gon himself, though of course the presence of a Jedi isn’t strange. 

No one remembers anything strange, nor do they recall anyone entering or exiting the research facility that morning. The responses have the feel of a broken holorecording: no one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one knew anything, no one even _smelled_ anything until Qui-Gon and Eddas had arrived and found the researchers dead and the facility destroyed. (The corpses are cold, too cold for the droids to set a likely time of death. It’s sometime between the half-point of the falling tide and the time of Eddas and Qui-Gon’s arrival, then, a stretch of nearly five standard hours.)

“Was it like that before, at any point?” Qui-Gon asks for what feels like the thousandth time. “Try to _remember_.” But that push yields nothing, as if he’s passing his hand through smoke. Usually there’s something, anything, a passing shadow, a reason for distraction, a secret that prevented a potential witness from witnessing, but this one just shakes her head slowly.

“It… it was just a normal morning,” she says. “Nothing happened until you found them.”

“Something did happen,” he points out through gritted teeth. “People were murdered. Did you see Eddas leave?” It’s a vain hope. No one else has, and this one shakes her head no too, even though she has sworn she passes Eddas most mornings and has a clear view of the research center from her workplace. 

“I… I really didn’t see anything. I don’t remember anything.” She’s sincere about that, Qui-Gon can’t sense a hint of a lie in her words. That’s the problem, though: liars crack, but the perceived truth is another matter entirely. (Of all Jedi, Qui-Gon would know. He trained as a diplomat at Dooku’s elbow, watching his master lie and misdirect and misrepresent for the greater good, and he learned and then he taught it himself.) So long as people believe they’re speaking the truth, they’re unshakeable, but changing perception on so large a scale requires more than smoke and mirrors. 

It takes the Force.


	20. Chapter 20

(It takes the Force and practice and a steady hand, a background in those teachings that are so particularly _Jedi_. This is the same skill set that can hide refugee camps and sway senators and send drunks home from a bar to sober up instead of brawling, the skill set of a _peacekeeper_. These people would go about their business calmly for weeks, if need be, until someone stumbled upon the scene of the crime. _There is no chaos, there is only harmony_ , the Jedi say, or for the old-fashioned _there is chaos, yet there is harmony_ ; the one who was here took certain ironic delight in setting this harmonious lie in place.

And it is ironic, isn’t it? Turning the teachings of the Jedi against them, luring them out into the greater galaxy where damage can be done, all those things are best accomplished by those intimately familiar with how the Jedi function. It is the way of things, it always has been, that some Jedi fall; lessons aren’t everything, and for all that may be done to nourish and grow the better parts of someone’s mind and personality, sometimes an apprentice is too proud, or too rash, or too possessive, or too fearful. Sometimes the Dark Side triumphs, despite everything. Sometimes, too, despite everything, the Dark Side fails. It doesn’t do to deal in absolutes.)

What Qui-Gon should do is call for backup. This is not the mission he has been assigned and not a mission the Council would see fit to put him on alone, given his current state. He thinks about this, then sets the thought aside. After all, he’s doing much better now, and if he’s cold it’s because his robes and shoes are soaked through, and Obi-Wan has another assignment and everyone is very busy. It will be fine. He stuffs his comm back in his pocket and turns back towards the city.

(The holocron doesn’t whisper to him now, he’s much too far away, but the damage has been done because somewhere deep within his mind is the thought that he’s being held back. Terrible things are coming, darkness and despair and the death of the Republic, and he is supposed to know this and think _there is no death, there is only the Force_? What use is the Force if one must sit idly by and watch the galaxy collapse? _The Force shall free you_ , say the Sith, and this is what they mean: shed restraint and claim your power, and only then will you be free. It is a lie, of course. For all the Jedi may be a flawed institution, there is no freedom in the Dark Side. There is rage and hate and power, yes, but ultimately there is only fear and the realization that you are a small, weak thing, rotting before your time and adrift in an all-consuming darkness that will someday consume you. The trouble is that most of those who give themselves over to the Dark Side learn this lesson much too late and most of the Jedi learn it never at all.) 

It is not a leap to think the interloper, the Dark Sider, is from offworld. It’s tourist season, offworlders seem more common a sight than locals, and surely no one would be stupid enough to use their own homeworld as a staging ground like this. (Such things are, for the most part, true. People’s homeworlds are special to them. Even Sidious, who would gladly sacrifice Naboo for his own glory, wants its fall broadcast through all the galaxy, wants documentaries and memorials, wants speeches. Many fallen Jedi, similarly, have set their home temples as the focus of their fury. This isn’t a beautiful sacrifice, as Naboo would have been. It is a baited trap and a warning.) No, the enemy is likely to be hidden in plain sight, watching this unfold from one of the seaside hotels or some other lofty perch. And the Bando Gora themselves, the killers… Well, once he has dealt with whoever ordered the killing, he’ll deal with them.

The next thing he should do but doesn’t is go to the tourism office and collect flight and hotel records. The chagrians aren’t known for their record-keeping, but one doesn’t need an intrinsic propensity for lists and files to know that keeping track of tourists benefits the local economy, so the lists are there. If cross-referenced, they could identify gaps and lead Qui-Gon to his enemy. That sounds like the long way to a solution, though, so instead he clambers back up towards the landing strip, finds a moderately mud-free area, and sits down to meditate. After all, this is a trap, and what’s one to do with a trap but spring it?

He reaches out into the Living Force and lets himself sink into it. (It’s a comforting presence, like sinking into a childhood bed that somehow still fits you or wrapping yourself in a familiar blanket that’s been worn soft but not ragged. Unlike a bed or a blanket, though, the Living Force is not a contained thing. Lose yourself in your bed and you will at worst oversleep and wake up groggy, but lose yourself in the Force and you may never find yourself again.) 

Around him, beneath him, Champala is aglow with petty life. Much of the living goes on beneath the waves, sparks of light refracted by the water’s surface and sending out more real ripples than metaphorical ones. The oil rig is silent and still, a blot upon the planet’s surface but a small one. The research facility has been cleared of bodies and cleaned up, and the sensation of death is fading from it little by little even as passers-by pass a little too quickly, hastened on by their own fear. Foolish, really. What they fear is long gone. Why can’t they see it?

Eddas—he can recognize Eddas—is wracked by grief that has hit a bit late. It turns the very Force around her bitter from agony, and even those who can’t sense it stay away. Her mother, two rooms away, worries, worries, worries, what has become of her bright and ambitious daughter? Further down the cape, the Vertae clerk paces and worries too, something has gone wrong, someone hasn’t answered. His guards wait for orders they know are coming, and the female guard is cleaning her blasters and considering their merits. This one’s quicker, she thinks, get it done and get out as soon as the call comes in, poor bastard. 

There are more pressing concerns. Qui-Gon turns his attention elsewhere. The tourists in the hotels are a cheerful, chittering mob. They don’t know what has happened right beside them and most of them wouldn’t care, because they have come to Champala for sunlight and beaches and fishing and sailing, and the deaths of locals are irrelevant to them, sad the way statistics are sad, but irrelevant in the same way. (Most of the tourists are human. That feeds into it.) Among them, Qui-Gon looks for an outlier, and he finds one. 

On the topmost floor of one of the hotels, built on stilts overlooking the water, there is a room that feels empty and cold. Around it, outside it, life chitters, but within there is only the leeching wound that Qui-Gon knows is the Dark Side. If his enemy is there, Qui-Gon can’t sense it, but the Dark is there and it is hungry so it’s there that he must go. But as he opens his eyes and is hit with the almost painful reality of being in his own form rather than in the Force, his mind wanders far from Champala. Those visions, those futures, they had echoed with the same sensation; it had clung to Dooku’s killer, to the man in black, to Obi-Wan on that blighted and empty starship bridge, to the _thing_ that had worn his old master’s face. But those weren’t right, those weren’t _here_. He knows Obi-Wan, and surely he knows Dooku, and the man in black is only a child now—but he has seen Anakin, hasn’t he, he knows how intensely Anakin can hunger for things.

(On Shili, Anakin babbles happily at little Ahsoka while his master halfway-listens, just in case. She’ll love Coruscant, he tells her, and explains about buildings so high you can see neither the sky nor the ground, people packed in so densely that the whole planet glows, and how the Temple is so close to everything important that he even got to shake the Chancellor’s hand. 

“What’s that?” Ahsoka asks. It’s a question she asks often, she’s a curious child.

“Dunno,” Anakin replies honestly. “He’s in charge of the Senate, I think. He’s supposed to run the galaxy, but from what he said he mostly signs things.”

Plo frowns. Palpatine and his predecessors had made a show of visiting the Jedi Temple on occasion, but those visits had usually been brief and formal. Valorum had had tea with Yoda, once or twice, and Dooku had always seized the opportunity to press some part of his political agenda upon the poor man, but they’d never in Plo’s experience stopped to chat with padwans. Of course, Anakin was something special, any of the Jedi could see that, but what interest would a man like Palpatine have in a child…?

It is lucky for Sidious that Plo Koon is the sort to see the best in others, because it would be well within reason for him to upon his return to Coruscant ask Master Windu if he didn’t think Palpatine was paying undue attention. Instead, Plo thinks of a clone army and of slave children in the Outer Rim and decides he can handle whatever this is quite alright without the Council’s intercession after all. Anakin had been on Naboo, after all, and the Chancellor had likely recognized him from there, that was all.)

No one stops Qui-Gon along the way to his destination, so he knows he’s on the right path. The thought even floats through his mind that whoever taught this one mind tricks did so very well, and he passes a silent kudos along to the probably-late instructor as he clears the last flight of stairs and knocks on the door at the end of the hall. 

“Hello, is anyone there?” he asks. For a moment there is nothing, just the incongruously bright sunlight and the smell of the sea from above, and then the door opens to an impeccably clean room. 

“Hello Master,” says a low, cool voice. “It’s been a while.”

And in that second Qui-Gon feels, abruptly, like some thirty years have dropped away. For a brief, stupid moment he’s elsewhere and elsewhen, landing a speeder to collect a padawan with laughing dark eyes and a crooked smile. ( _It’s been a while._ “Have you missed me already?” the distant-past Qui-Gon answers and chuckles. “Come now, Xanatos, at this rate what will you do when I knight you?”) He had expected a ghost, that much was true, an echo of Baltizaar perhaps, or someone he’d recognize from Damask’s summit on Serenno—that is to say, he’d expected a ghost that belonged to someone else. Xanatos, though, Xanatos has always been _Qui-Gon_ ’s ghost, the brilliant and adored apprentice that had, somehow, in the span of an hour, changed from Qui-Gon’s pride and joy to a mad and vicious creature that had plagued that Jedi and the galaxy on and off for years. 

(It isn’t as simple as Qui-Gon makes it out to be. Even as a child, Xanatos had been arrogant and scheming and self-centered, and some had seen him at Qui-Gon’s side and thought he was all those things like his master before him and like Dooku before that—one or two had even dared add the venerated Grandmaster Yoda to that description. Clever, all three, surely, powerful too, charming in a way that was just slightly more laced with Force than most. Xanatos had been a thoroughly expected and typical addition to the lineage, and in his fall he had laid its flaws bare. When Yoda had schemed to place a new apprentice in Qui-Gon’s care, he’d chosen carefully—little Obi-Wan who was so selfless and quiet and practical, so unlike his master and so unlike his predecessor. Dooku’s next charge had been carefully picked too, just in case, for similar traits: no more maverick streaks and heads held high, only children who had no concept of themselves outside the Jedi Order.)

He blinks (his eyes sting, maybe tears, maybe smoke, maybe acrid fumes, in any case they sting from prior meetings) and returns to the moment. Warm sunlight illuminates the room, which has a whole wall of windows looking out over the water. Every surface is impeccably clean, but that does nothing for the lingering smell of death. Xanatos’s voice is coming from a high-backed chair in the center of the room, but there’s no one in it. 

“Couldn’t be bothered to meet me in person, Padawan?” Qui-Gon asks. His voice comes out dry and calm, the way he’s practiced, but it sounds far away. 

“Oh, I would have,” Xanatos replies evenly. “Perhaps I even will, in due time, but at the moment I have much else to attend to. Did you guess it was me, or did you follow your nose here blindly?”

“Why are you working with the Bando Gora?” Qui-Gon asks instead of answering that, and Xanatos clicks his tongue in exasperation. 

“You’re in no position to be asking questions, Master,” he says. “Consider this… a test run, of sorts. The Bando Gora possess something I need, and I possess something they need. To the victor go the spoils, as they say.”

“And killing those people? Is that part of your victory?” He isn’t in any position to interrogate, no, but he knows Xanatos and he knows the man likes to talk. (It’s a shared trait, sometimes a strength and sometimes, more often, a weakness.) 

“Don’t you see? Oh well, I suppose you don’t. Poor Master Qui-Gon, always blinded by the light you turn to. Like a moth, really. You’ll burn just as easily.” Xanatos gives a hollow laugh. He’d been the one to burn, last they’d met, and Qui-Gon had hoped a bit hopelessly that his former apprentice had died of his wounds. He knows better than to say that, though, so he waits. Xanatos picks up the thread after a moment. “They were never the target. People that weak are easily silenced any which way. Jedi are different creatures entirely, though. I had hoped more than one of you would come, but you, my dear Master Qui-Gon, are a special case. Your death is worth a great deal to me—and to others.”

“To whom?” Qui-Gon asks, but that’s apparently a step too far. There’s a dull thud as Xanatos slams his fist against… probably a wall, wherever he is.

“Enough! I tire of this. If you want the woman Doraas alive, find me aboard the Corrocity. I make you no guarantees, but you’d better come alone. And do make it snappy. The Bando Gora are hungry.”

And with a click, the transmission shuts off. Qui-Gon bolts to the chair, but there’s just a generic-looking receiver on the seat. There’s a key in the door from the inside, so he grabs that and takes one last look around at the emptiness. The Corrocity, then, he can find that—

Something flickers in the Force, and he stops in his tracks. No, no, he knows Xanatos too well. This is a cover for something else—or it is itself and also a cover. He will keep Doraas alive if only to kill her when it is most painful, or else she is dead already. But someone else lives, someone who may know far more than she has admitted. Eddas. Qui-Gon swears under his breath and takes the stairs three at a time on his way back down before tearing across town in a stolen speeder towards Eddas’s mother’s home. 

(Three Bando Gora cultists are in motion towards the same destination as well.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a sucker for Legends villains, I confess, so here's Qui-Gon's nutcase Dark Sider ex-apprentice Xanatos, back at it again with the murder and the convoluted schemes. Last spotted chatting up the Trade Federation in Chapter 5, fwiw!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly late, sorry, I moved apartments this week and that took a bit of precedence.

Qui-Gon arrives in time to see Eddas’s mother open the door for her assailants, and springs into action a split-second before they attack. Though he isn’t the most gifted warrior in the Order (far from it, he is a diplomat in peacetime and a rebel against Dooku’s fixation on dueling) he has the element of surprise on his side and strikes down two of the cultists from behind. The third puts up a fight, but not enough of one—they rely on striking fear into their opponents, usually, and knowledge is the antidote to fear—and soon enough Qui-Gon steps over their broken bodies and rotting blood.

“They were here to silence your daughter,” he tells the frightened chagrian. “I need to speak with her. Now.” 

(Qui-Gon is lucky that he lives in a time when Jedi are well-respected in much of the galaxy and the Sith are things of myth and nightmare, because even now the woman thinks, for a split second, that he is a monster. Who can blame her? She had opened the door to strangers so shortly after talk of a vicious, animalistic murderer had spread through her neighborhood, only to see a disheveled stranger strike them down before they could speak then turn to her completely unperturbed by their death or by the blood and filth staining his robes and unevenly-shorn hair as the smell of decay filled the air. But then she blinks and thinks and remembers and sees that he’s holding a lightsaber and not a vibroblade and that this is the Jedi who had been with her daughter, and surely that’s alright then. Like many, she doesn’t know much at all about the doings of Jedi, but she has heard all her life that they are good, so the man who has left corpses on her doorstep must be good and the corpses must be those of evildoers. Were that not the case, after all, it would be the collapse of a fundamental tenet of the Republic. Luck all around, then, that in this case it is all true and Qui-Gon really has saved her life.) 

She stares for a long moment, then mumbles assent and fetches Eddas, who is tearstained and so despairing it leaves the taste of salt and bile in Qui-Gon’s mouth. This, he thinks, is more than survivor’s guilt. And she’s so very very young, young like a padawan, like a child that wandered too far afield and couldn’t find her way back through the dark. An Xanatos—no, Xanatos is beyond help now. Else Eddas may not be. 

“You had no idea what they’d do, did you?” he asks, and for a moment expects her to lash out or burst into tears anew, but instead any resistance drains from her. (She’s tired, she’s tired, she’d meant to one-up Doraas and now there’s blood on her hands that won’t wash out and rot in the water sinking deep into the corals she’d studied and sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it.)

“He said they’d take Professor Doraas to court,” she says lamely. (The words feel like ashes.) “On Coruscant. She’d been involved in—stuff. Took bribes. Helped Senator Amedda when he wanted things to look legitimate. And then four years ago she decided she was going to play activist, like she suddenly cared about our planet out of nowhere. Everyone knew—the lab knew—but she had funding and ways to get more always. I just—I wanted to scare her. To show her it wasn’t all forgiven and forgotten.” She looks up at Qui-Gon dull-eyed and exhausted. “I didn’t—I swear I just wanted to scare her.” 

It feels true enough. No viciousness or bloodlust here, just a petty scheme that spiralled grossly out of control. (Wrath and vengeance are tools of the Dark Side. The Jedi way would have been to forgive Doraas her checkered past, not punish her for it, but most people do not live as Jedi do and cannot reasonably be expected to. The Force is not strong with Eddas, and that is a mercy, because if it were her guilt and rage and sorrow would twist her into something horrific.)

“Tell me whom you spoke to, where you met them, tell me everything,” says Qui-Gon as gently as he can. He remembers the Bando Gora cultist with the walls of his mind disintegrating to dust, and worries something similar may become of the girl if he pushes her. “There is a chance Doraas is alive. The least we can do is help her.” (This isn’t a shatterpoint because this is not a thing of galactic importance, but we all have choices to make. Eddas stands on the edge of something and thinks with a sudden viciousness _the least Doraas can do is die like the others_. The thought horrifies her.) Eddas scrubs a hand over her face.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’ll tell you everything.” 

——————

Her confession is enough, likely, to drive Vertae off the planet, assuming Xanatos leaves any of his minions alive behind him. Words alone are not enough to save Doraas or capture Xanatos, though, so Qui-Gon sends a message back to the Council about it and makes haste for the Corrocity. (It’s the first message he has sent back since his mission began, an explanation of murders no one off of Champala knows occurred.) 

The Corrocity itself floats gently above the water a half hour’s boat ride from the cape. Under bright sunlight and against kyber-blue seas, it looks like a rich man’s star yacht. (It is one, technically, only it is a great deal else too, much like its owner is several dozen things in addition to being a rich man.) The stench of the Bando Gora lingers here too, along with a handful of muted presences—Xanatos himself, Qui-Gon would recognize him anywhere, a captive, droids, and a cold shadow hanging over it all from a distance. Some part of Qui-Gon wants to grab Xanatos by the shoulders and shake him— _look what you are, look what you have become, you could have been so much more, I should have talked sense into you on Telos IV, I should have killed you on Telos IV._

But the past is not something Jedi are supposed to dwell on, and in the present Xanatos is holding a captive. Clear heads and gentle words tend to prevail in hostage situations, Qui-Gon knows, but the frustration he feels doesn’t dissipate into the Force like it ought. He feels righteous for it, really. Why should he not be angry at his former apprentice? Why should he pretend this isn’t personal, that this is about Xanatos’s victims rather than about the man’s mad vendetta and Qui-Gon’s repeated failure to stop him? _I should have killed you on Telos IV, but I can kill you here and now._

(Can he, though? That fateful day he’d frozen up, after all. High above the factory floor, Xanatos had laughed and Qui-Gon had seen instead of a traitor and a killer and a Darks Side adept, the apprentice he had loved like a son. And when Obi-Wan and the local politicians had caught up to them, Xanatos had been gone and Qui-Gon had been pale and startled and he’d gestured to the acid vats below and said _he jumped_ and no one had any reason to ask _jumped where_. And Qui-Gon had never corrected them, and Xanatos had vanished into the darkness for years on end and it had all been alright until it wasn’t. When they say attachments lead to the Dark Side, they mean things like this: Xanatos had loved his father, whom he barely knew, and Qui-Gon had loved his apprentice who’d never return the feeling, and had either one bothered stopping to think, let alone do something properly Jedi-esque like meditate or seek advice a great many things would have gone differently.)

He doesn’t burn with rage as he sets foot upon the Corrocity, because a lifetime of training transmutes rage into other forms. It boils, instead. (Do you know the adage about boiling frogs? If you place a frog in boiling water, it will jump out scalded, but if you place a frog in a pot of water and bring it to a boil, the frog will not even notice its impending death. Of course, to carry out such an experiment requires a fundamental level of cruelty. Hego Damask, as a child, had tested it and written up the results in neat shorthand.) 

By the time he finds Xanatos, by the time he has marched right into the trap that’s been laid, he’s furious like he has never been before, his mind clouded with thoughts of righteous revenge (he’d been merciful, and this is how Xanatos repays him?) and his body moving as if it’s someone else’s and he’s just watching it. 

_That’s not right_ , he thinks, but he thinks it from far, far away. _This isn’t how this is supposed to go._

Like he’s watching a scene play out in a mirror, he watches himself storm onto the Corrocity’s central deck, where Xanatos is waiting, scarred and proud and looking far older than Qui-Gon expected, somehow, and Doraas sits, exhausted but resigned, in an electric cell.

“Took you long enough, Master. I was starting to think you’d run,” Xanatos drawls, but there’s an undercurrent of fear to him. (This is a trap set for the Qui-Gon Jinn he remembers, but the man who has walked into it is something rather else. He remembers now a warning passed from somewhere high up by his new allies to be wary of the Jedi Jinn, a warning he’d laughed off before.) 

“Have you ever known me to run?” Qui-Gon answers in not quite his own voice. “We are not all cowards like you.”

“I’m not the coward,” Xanatos scoffs, but he’s looking for an exit already, one hand on the red saber at his waist. Qui-Gon sees his own blade light up, not the color of grass and life but the sickly green of Bando Gora fire. “And I’m not the fool either. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Master, but you’ve got a price on your head like you couldn’t imagine.”

“Is that what this is about? Money?” Qui-Gon asks. It feels like coming up for air, briefly. Xanatos laughs, high and close to hysterical. (There’s no ghost of the beloved apprentice in this laugh, because this is no longer the game of revenge. There are greater things, darker things, coming, and Xanatos hopes to stay a step ahead of change.)

“Money? Oh, you really don’t know half of it, do you? I was a Jedi—and now I’m a rich man. What use is money to me? There is much in this galaxy that’s worth more than credits.” On that they agree. Qui-Gon’s thoughts drift to Damask’s holocron, unbidden. Who could put a monetary value on the knowledge such a thing contained? He sees Xanatos nod briefly. “You surely understand—you’ve learned the value of power, haven’t you? Those who have true power can control the fate of the galaxy, while the rest of us are merely pawns. I’ve even heard tell of one with the power over life and death—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head. (There is no power known to the Jedi or the Sith that can return the dead truly to life, but Xanatos loved his father too much and like many others he _wonders_.) “Enough talk. Your death will be my victory.” And he ignites his saber and leaps. 

They’ve fought before, of course, and sparred and trained before that. It’s been a while, but the motions are as familiar as a kata as they clash. (Xanatos is quick, but speed is of no importance if your enemy knows your every reaction. He has trained extensively to overcome this weakness, but in doing so has missed the basic reason for it: it isn’t that Qui-Gon recognizes the patterns in his ataru as much as that Qui-Gon recognizes the patterns in his subconscious.) 

“ _Surrender_ ,” Qui-Gon orders through gritted teeth. He almost says _kneel_ , almost, almost. 

“I won’t die at your hand,” Xanatos retorts, and with a final strike launches himself up, onto the balcony above. “Even if that means something else will have the pleasure of ending you.” And the walls come almost-alive with blaster turrets even as Qui-Gon gives chase. 

In the end Xanatos escapes, because he’s younger and quicker and Qui-Gon can’t dog his heels with his comm going off incessantly in his pocket and the niggling thought that maybe he should go back and rescue Doraas before he blows the Corrocity to bits. It’s a narrow escape, though; his airspeeder narrowly clears the explosion while Qui-Gon wraps himself in the Force and sinks beneath the waves with Doraas safely in his arms. 

It works for a moment, and Qui-Gon opens his eyes to see the flaming wreckage of the Corrocity doused well above his head and Doraas rubbing her wrists where she’d been bound. She mouths a shaky thanks, and for a moment everything’s fine—then Qui-Gon’s control slips and the cold water hits his lungs before he can think.


	22. Chapter 22

This isn’t the first time he’s drowned. Such is the life of a Jedi, really—there is no death, there is only the Force, but in the meantime there are near misses and narrow escapes and floods and fires and blaster bolts and explosions and people who must be saved. The last time, he’d shut his eyes and trusted in the Force and been aided to the surface by a friendly sea creature and returned to himself to hear Obi-Wan complaining at length about defective equipment. This time, though, he struggles as the water closes and churns around him and his vision goes dark. In his struggles he knocks away Doraas’s hands as she tries to help and finds himself sinking ever further down, down, down into the nightmarish abyss.

(There’s a reason the Jedi are _many_. Plo Koon was quite right about that. One individual may tip the scale, start a war or end one, save a life or lose a soul, but there are things institutions can do that individuals cannot. It is meant, then, written into the spirit of the rules of the Jedi if not quite the letter of them, for no one to fall alone—for there to always be a master or an apprentice or a sibling-padawan or a friend to fall back on when things are too big to be faced alone, because the galaxy is very big indeed and a Jedi is meant to know the smallness of any person. 

Of course, that’s not always the case. It doesn’t do to deal in absolutes, of course. But for a very long time it has generally worked. For every Jedi vanished on the fringes of the galaxy, there are a dozen who were found or not lost at all. For every student fallen to the Dark Side, there are ten who have gazed into the Dark then turned to ask for help, because help was there. For every Jedi dead on a mission gone wrong, a multitude has been saved instead. 

Qui-Gon’s haphazard interim report landed on Mace Windu’s metaphorical desk, and Mace had taken one look at the name _Xanatos_ and the word _murder_ and promptly sent backup, because Mace is an eminently practical man. So Qui-Gon sinks and Doraas panics and then a graceful nautolan cuts through the churning waters like they’re nothing, catches Doraas around the waist and Qui-Gon by the front of his robes, and pulls them up to the surface.)

Qui-Gon comes to on solid ground, his sodden cloak tucked under his head like a pillow and sunlight on his face, and hears the tail end of an explanation.

“—can’t imagine I know half the story, Doctor, but Master Windu thought there would be more trouble here than one Jedi could handle. It was a matter of the Dark Side of the Force, I was told.” 

He knows that voice, that presence. Knight—no, _Master_ Fisto now, the young man who had stepped in to train Eerin after Tahl’s death. The burst of bitterness he feels at the memory is unwarranted. Kit Fisto is a good man and a good Jedi and he had had nothing whatsoever to do with Tahl’s death, and more importantly he’d just pulled Qui-Gon from a watery grave. Doraas murmurs something he can’t catch. 

“I don’t know, I’m afraid,” says Fisto. “But I believe our mutual friend has woken. Perhaps he will be able to enlighten us.” His presence drifts to Qui-Gon’s side. “Master Jinn? How are you feeling?”

“Spectacular,” rasps Qui-Gon, who feels like he has bruised everything he could conceivably bruise, including his own consciousness and connection to the Force. He hears Fisto’s warm laugh above him and wishes there was a mocking note to it. (There isn’t. He’s genuinely glad to hear Qui-Gon being his usual mouthy self, despite everything.) “Where… Xanatos. What happened to Xanatos?” Fisto hums.

“I saw a small ship breaking for the atmosphere as I came down,” he says. “I was sent to find you, though, not him.” 

“Who… who was that man? He—Xanatos, you called him?” That’s Doraas. She sounds steadier that Qui-Gon would have expected, calmer somehow. “The two of you knew each other.”

“Yes,” says Fisto. “I think we could all benefit from comparing notes.” 

So Qui-Gon forces himself into a seated position, blinks back the stars that bloom across his vision, and gives his best explanation of events while Doraas fills in the blanks. Fisto takes notes and listens with an increasingly worried expression on his face. 

(It isn’t a pleasant story he’s hearing, after all. Eddas had made her bargain with Vertae and sold out her coworkers, and then she’d skipped work one morning to go meet Qui-Gon at the landing strip. While she was gone, the Bando Gora, under Xanatos’s orders, had descended upon the facility while Xanatos himself hid them from detection. Doraas had tried to flee the slaughter, only to be captured and delivered to the Corrocity. Then Qui-Gon and Eddas had arrived at the scene and the investigation had dragged on and on…)

“He… he was my student, long ago,” says Qui-Gon, when Doraas asks about Xanatos for the fourth time. “He went mad.” 

“Forgive my saying, but he did not seem mad,” Doraas replies slowly. “He seemed rather lucid.” (What she not-quite-means is that he’d seemed more lucid than Qui-Gon, or at least more put together.) 

“He went mad,” Qui-Gon repeats. “That’s what happens when Jedi fall.” Doraas looks dubious, as if she knows anything at all about the Jedi, and Qui-Gon glares. “And what of Eddas? Why would she betray all of you like that?” Doraas’s expression darkens.

“Fool girl had no idea what she was doing and did it anyway. If she’d gone after me that would be one thing, but now…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what will be done to her. Or to those twits from Vertae, if they were involved in any of this.”

———————

The Vertae clerk is found dead in his cleared-out office, shot through the head and heart. Of the company itself, there’s nothing left but the datapad he’d given Qui-Gon. The guards, of course, have vanished. The local authorities arrest Eddas, who sobs all the way to prison, and look at Qui-Gon with such contempt that he asks Fisto to plead the woman’s case instead. 

(There are a thousand arguments that can be made, but Kit looks at the crying girl and two guards holding her and the prosecutor, tilts his head, and smiles.

“Don’t you know her?” he asks. They do. “You know she wouldn’t have meant for this to happen. That offworlder took advantage of all of you.”

“We can’t prosecute _him_ ,” is the response. Kit nods, pondering the matter.

“The Republic can, though,” he says calmly. “And documented testimony would help then.” 

It makes sense, and pleading sense is sometimes simpler than pleading mercy. These people don’t want to hear about the Force and its intricacies right now, they want to believe things will return to normal and that there is some external power that can put everything right and wash away all signs of senseless destruction and chaos and grand games played on a galactic scale. Of course, they are rational beings so they don’t quite believe Kit’s words, not when they know the many weaknesses of the Republic, not when Senator Amedda is the new chancellor’s right hand but still seems unable to win anything for his constituents, but they want to. That’s the bit that matters. The prosecutor nods briefly and says she’ll keep it in mind. She will. It doesn’t take the Force to make something stick.)

And then it’s time to leave. It feels callous, in the moment, to walk away before the trial, before funerals, before anything is actually finished, but Qui-Gon reminds himself that it will never be finished if he lingers. However unsatisfying the conclusion, his work on Champala is done—and resolution will have to occur elsewhere, wherever Xanatos is run to ground and the Bando Gora are destroyed at last. (The Jedi don’t usually attend funerals. They often want to, because they are people and people tend to mourn the dead, and because the Force gives them, too often, a taste of the personal grief that surrounds them. But it is not the Jedi’s lot to mourn the dead, that’s in their very code, and too many times in their history has a Jedi knelt in mourning and risen in revenge and fallen in darkness. It is their lot, instead, to make it so there are fewer such funerals, less of such grief. It is a difficult one. Some of them grow cold for it, others try to make it up in small mercies and kindnesses, others still turn bitter.)

“Do you think Xanatos ordered the attack on Coruscant?” Fisto asks abruptly once they’re both on his ship and halfway out of Champala’s orbit. Could he have? He’d attacked the Jedi Temple before, but it had always been … personal, somehow. The attack on the Temple had been quite the opposite, hadn’t it? Too unfocused, too much general destruction and not enough of a targeted hit on people who’d displeased him. 

“He said it was a temporary alliance,” Qui-Gon replies instead of saying any of that. “The ones that attacked us may have been answering to a different master.” But who? Someone willing to ally with Xanatos, someone Xanatos was willing to ally with, but to what end? The Force brings no answers at all, just a throbbing pain in Qui-Gon’s head and an insidious whisper— _what if you had been faster, what if you had been stronger, what if you’d known the truth beyond what the Council would tell you, what if, what if, what if…_

——————

(Safe in his escape, Xanatos should be plotting his next move—he has a former teacher to kill, a rival to defeat, a potential benefactor to impress, and setting aside all that he has a minor criminal empire to run. Instead, he _worries_. Xanatos may lack in wisdom, or perhaps in what is euphemistically called common sense, or perhaps in some deeper application of logic, but he is not a stupid man and he can tell he holds nowhere near all the cards in this situation. It’s not a position he likes to be in. 

First, most jarringly, something has _happened_ to his former master. There’d always been the streak of self-righteous cruelty in the man, a trait Xanatos had once admired until he'd hated it, and he’d had an often haphazard approach to things he deemed unimportant, which had aggravated Xanatos endlessly, but now? Oh, now he is fraying at the seams. Xanatos hopes it hurts, but hopes aside he no longer quite knows his enemy. 

Secondly, it’s clear someone else does know the details of this change. The warning that had drifted down through his contacts at the Trade Federation had originated somewhere outside it. Surely not with that fool heading up the death cult, but surely with someone who has a stake in Xanatos’s victory—or, more likely, in Jinn’s destruction. But that leads to more questions than it answers and leads Xanatos in mental circles. Jinn, surely, has gotten tangled up in something far grander than he can comprehend—

But if that’s the case, Xanatos has too. There is a changing tide in the Force, and for a moment his mind is clear enough that he knows it will drown him. Then he blinks and thinks of a legend, a Sith Lord who had the power over life and death itself, of the ultimate power that is the gift, he thinks, of the Dark Side, and the grand destiny that has been laid before him, the vengeance he deserves and the titles he will earn. It’s far more alluring a thought. All that can be his, he just needs to destroy one fraying old fool, surpass one demented madwoman, and win his place as Lord Sidious’s right hand and apprentice. If the Sith emerge from myth to rise again, after all, Xanatos _will_ have his share of the spoils.)


	23. Chapter 23

The Temple is half-empty when Qui-Gon returns, but it is all abuzz. He hears Xanatos’s name whispered and feels the stares that range from pitying to accusatory to merely curious, and for a moment he hates all of this—

But the Temple is home, and the familiarity of it settles around him like a heavy blanket, as if he’s come in from somewhere far and cold instead of from an Inner-Rim beach. Of course they stare and whisper, they have every right to. Xanatos has been written off as dead for a decade, the culmination of not-quite-lies and easy misdirections and desperate hope, and before that he had spent another decade being a terror to all Jedi. Of course people wonder and whisper whether Qui-Gon had been the deceiver or the deceived, and in either case why. Of course the younglings and the little apprentices, the ones who are too young to have known Xanatos except from rumors and warning stories, stare with big, curious eyes and wonder what parts of the stories are true and how Xanatos the Ghost has possibly returned to life. Of course the question of _why now_ hangs heavily in the air. They’d be fools not to wonder, after all, and Qui-Gon knows this and he knows it’s his own fault. 

Knowing doesn’t quite rid him of the hate, but it lowers the boil to a simmer by the time Fisto politely marches him into the council chambers and shuts the doors behind them. Here, the stares are uniformly accusatory, Qui-Gon thinks, and he finds it rather more amusing than he should. 

“Jinn,” says Windu, worried and exasperated in seemingly equal measure. (He’s kicking himself, internally, running through inconsistencies that now seem obvious. How many others had he missed? How many others will he miss? The next time, will he know better, will he ask _jumped where_ , will he ask _told you what, exactly_? Or will he accept the simple, seemingly sensible path and follow it until people are dead? Mace has made it a priority to know the paths to the Dark Side, to know the enemy within as well as he knows his Jedi-self, and he knows full well it is the easy path that leads to a fall.)

“Explain this, you must,” says Yoda very severely. Qui-Gon stares at the old grandmaster for a long moment and tries his best not to wonder what the blazes 900 years of experience are for if not to not need explanations.

“He jumped,” he says, and his voice sounds flat and calm. “No one ever asked me where.”

——————

(In the Archives far below, Maul paces and thinks far too much. There is a rumor drifting through the Temple, and it’s the second seventh and the last quarter of a story that everyone seems to know by heart. Everyone except Maul himself, who can’t even pull a full narrative from scraps about a lost apprentice and a bogeyman and fathers and sons and masters and apprentices and the path from the Dark Side to death and resurrection. 

He is not as bothered by not having the full story as he could be, and entirely more bothered by the sense of exclusion than he should be. The Sith are outsiders in perpetuity, dwelling in the galaxy’s shadows unknown to all and far above petty gossip, and yet, and yet, and yet, here are people—beings—creatures that some base and animal part of Maul’s mind screams into the void are _like him_ , are _same_ , and the cold knowledge that there is an insurmountable gulf between them and him hurts. This one specific gulf of understanding, however, isn’t quite so grand. 

_Stalking a target_ through Master Nu’s domain feels… incorrect, somehow, so he tries to tread loudly and keep his hands in the pockets of the borrowed brown cloak as he approaches the Jedi he’s picked out—a quiet, human-looking man a bit older than himself whom he’s seen perusing atlases of obscure geographic formations at hours when most people slept and of whom Master Nu appeared to approve, though Maul still had no inkling of what metric she used. He stops a good lunge-length away and waits, but the Jedi shows no indication of having noticed his presence—or frankly of having noticed anything beyond his datapad. This would likely be an easy kill, but killing in the Archive is also incorrect so he waits a few moments longer then tries clearing his throat. The Jedi returns his attention to reality so abruptly he physically flinches, then blinks at Maul with slightly unfocused green eyes.

“Who…?” he starts, then clearly makes a mental connection. “Oh! You—you are— er, that is, I’ve seen you reading.” It’s a non-sequitur, certainly, and if anything the man is more startled now. Maul frowns. 

“I have seen you reading as well.” Obviously. As recently as moments ago. Threats come more easily to Maul than conversation, so they stare at each other in silence for rather a long time before the Jedi offers a twitchy smile and turns his attention to his datapad again. Maul grabs the thing and shoves it down, which makes the Jedi flinch even more. 

“What—” he starts, and this time there is no way Maul is going to attempt smalltalk. 

“Tell me about Xanatos,” he orders. And with no small amount of stammering, the Jedi does.

It isn’t a complicated story. Maul has heard similar ones, though from far more long ago. There will always be Jedi who fall, there will always be apprentices who hunger for more, Xanatos is not the first nor the last nor the most significant of his breed. Still, it is a story, and Maul asks until he has every strange detail. Xanatos had been a favored apprentice. Xanatos had loved his father, because children who know their families sometimes love them the way Anakin loves his mother. Master Jinn had struck the father down, because the father had been a criminal and there had been no other way out, and Xanatos had sworn revenge because that is what people do when they lose the ones they love. And then Xanatos had preyed on his former allies, harmed children, and tormented Master Jinn’s next apprentice, all reasonable ways to prolong the suffering of one’s target, and then Master Jinn had cornered him and Xanatos had vanished and everyone had believed him dead, because Master Jinn hadn’t said no.

“He didn’t—didn’t lie,” says the Jedi. “We don’t lie, we aren’t supposed to. Sometimes though… one can mangle the truth without lying.” Something occurs to him, and he quickly plunges into what Maul doesn't quite grasp is an object lesson. “Jinn told the truth—from a certain point of view. Only, you see, that doesn’t work out quite so well ever.”

“Because Xanatos is alive?” Maul asks, then amends it. “Because he can no longer ignore that he is.” The Jedi nods.

“Ignoring something doesn’t, er, doesn’t make it not real. One cannot speak things into or out of existence, not for all the powers of the Force.” He smiles crookedly. “It didn’t work on the Sith, for one.” 

“No,” says Maul, and he thinks he should be proud. “It didn’t. There is something else.”

“Yes,” says the Jedi. “The question no one can answer is: why would he reappear now? As a dead man, so to speak, he had been able to go about his business without any trouble, but his life will be rather more difficult now that he has our attention once again.” 

“Not just yours,” says Maul. The Jedi looks at him quizzically and Maul thinks, briefly, of stopping then. He doesn’t, though, because while hate is easy the Jedi have not kept him from books or food or company even, and Sidious, oh _Sidious_ has used him and cast him aside, sent him as a sacrifice and a message, and reached through space to Kesmere Minor and told him not to kill but to die, and die begging for mercy on his knees like a slave. Hate is easy, so Maul puts his hands behind his back and stands the way he’d seen the tall Councilman, Windu, stand, and looks the Jedi in the eye. “There are always two, a master and an apprentice. One to have power, one to crave it. Has it not struck you my master may be seeking my replacement?”)

——————

Qui-Gon hears that suggestion a long time later, after he’s been interrogated extensively and handed off to the healers who want nothing to do with him and wouldn’t be able to help anyway. He’s sitting quietly waiting to be allowed back out and trying to focus on relief, calm, serenity, _home_ when Windu marches in like he’s on the warpath, two younger Jedi tagging along behind him rather wide-eyed.

“Jinn,” he says, too cold. “Do you think Xanatos could be in the league with the Sith?”

The denial that springs to Qui-Gon’s lips is automatic. _Of course not, of course not, Xanatos would never, Xanatos is rash and foolhardy but he’d never_ — up until he had, of course, and then it had been _Xanatos may have betrayed us, but this cruelty is beyond him, he wouldn’t_ , and then it had been _he jumped_. He bites the automatic response back down. (Doesn’t matter, it’s written clearly on his face and practically ringing in the Force.)

“What makes you say that?” he answers, carefully neutral. Windu frowns, and his intense gaze flickers down and to the left, towards where the Archives are. That’s answer enough. “Ah. Have you been chatting with our prisoner?” It’s meant as a jab and certainly received as one. Windu doesn’t like the thought of keeping prisoners, even if practically speaking that’s what Maul is and that’s also the safest thing for him to be. 

“He seems to find it beyond doubt that Xanatos has thrown in with his former master,” says Windu very stiffly. He doesn’t say _but only the Sith deal in absolutes_ , but Qui-Gon thinks that may be exclusively because there is an actual Sith involved. “I am asking your view on the matter.” 

“My views?” Qui-Gon echoes, and he can’t keep the sardonic note from his tone. 

(When he looks just the right way, Mace can see feather-fine cracks cutting Qui-Gon off from the rest of the Temple. It is not yet something as heavy as a shatterpoint tends to be, but it is a clear warning—left unchecked, this could be so much worse. Too many things carry the weight of destiny lately, more than Mace has ever seen in his life, and his elders on the Council can offer no guidance. But Mace Windu has always been practical, and he knows that a sensible thing to do in the dark is to look for a light switch.)

“Of course,” he says. “You’re the only Jedi to have seen him since Telos IV.” 

Windu’s words hang in the air long after they’re spoken, and Qui-Gon waits for a caveat or accusation that doesn’t come then releases a breath he doesn’t remember holding. He’s cold and tired and the future looms dark and full of unknown factors.

“I— I don’t know,” Qui-Gon says. “I saw him, I spoke to him, but I don’t know.” There is much he doesn’t know, he knows that, and even as Windu nods in understanding Qui-Gon can hear the voice of Hego Damask in the back of his mind. _If you can open the holocron, you will find answers which you seek, and many a foundation upon which to find answers. If you can open it, if you can open it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest appearance by Ruvert J'ai from alphamikefoxtrot's _identify the stars (and watch them twinkle)_ as the master of exposition!


	24. Chapter 24

Qui-Gon’s punishment is a subtle one. For a little while, he almost believes he’s forgiven for the whole debacle, that it will go back to the normal manner of eye-rolling and exasperated huffing and Dooku-would-never, what-is-it-this-times, but of course Xanatos is a step too far for that.

(It isn’t Xanatos’s part in the debacle that is the step too far. Under other circumstances Yoda would have pronounced some koan about attachment and Mace would have lectured and steps would have been taken to apprehend the man and that would have been it. Now, though, they think of war and of Dooku burning through droid armies with Sith lightning, they think of a crimson holocron delivered to Qui-Gon’s doorstep—and their own, they think of enemies breaching the temple itself and of a prophecy and of apprentices. And then they think of Qui-Gon with a feral look in his eyes and cold, calm voice, and they know the step too far has happened quite a while ago. But when?)

When Qui-Gon manages, at last, to assure a half dozen healers that he is in fact well enough to go into the nearest part of the city and restock his tea supply (the promise that he won’t cut and run is unspoken, but some things are audible in the Force itself) it takes him a bit longer than it should to realize he has company. Knight Eerin tails him for half a hour before he manages to pick her presence out from the din of life and sound that is Coruscant and folds her arms in her sleeves and doesn’t argue when he accuses her of being sent after him.

“Honestly? I thought you’d recognize my speeder,” she says mildly. Truthfully, he’d been to relieved to be out from under the Council’s gaze to pay the slightest attention to anyone’s speeder. Eerin giggles. “Obi-Wan always complains about your flying, now I can see why.”

“Obi-Wan should have more faith in the Force,” he snaps before he has the time to mean it. “That is, I’ve never crashed.”

“There always has to be a first time,” Eerin replies. Her big, flat eyes give the impression of perpetual serenity — or blank stupidity, to those who don’t know her — but she’d been a playful, chipper child and then a damaged and frightened teenager and now has grown the perpetual background hum of worry that’s common to healers and crechemasters and all other sorts that hope against hope that today their charges won’t be party to some or another disaster.

“Did Windu send you?” Qui-Gon asks. Eerin stares unblinkingly.

“No. I’m doing this because Obi’d be worried sick.”

(Mace had asked Deepa to handle it and she’d reasonably taken the matter to Bant and asked her if she’d have time to mind her dear friend’s wayward former master, and Bant had agreed before she’d even been finished explaining. Bant is a gentle girl, better suited to the soft touch than the lightsaber, and she’d be ill-suited to hunting the Bando Gora through the galaxy. Here, though, she thinks she can help—for the sake of her dear friend, for the sake of her late master Tahl, for the sake of freeing herself from the memory of being Xanatos’s victim. None of this is for Qui-Gon, who’d run kind one day and ice cold the next and for all his propensity for action done nothing that she could see to the benefit of those she cares about.)

He buys his tea, fields a curious question or two about his regrettably burned-short hair, and is escorted back to his speeder despite offers of games of pazaak and dejarik and suggestions he peruse some interesting trinkets picked up by a fellow patron’s contact’s brother’s friend, and is back at the Temple in record time.

“I’m not going to fall from playing pazaak,” he tells Eerin.

“Then play against me,” she says. “I can tell if you cheat.”

She has Tahl’s old deck, cards worn and stained and marked up in familiar ways, and the fact is distracting enough that Qui-Gon loses five times in a row and goes to meditate instead.

——————

(Obi-Wan would be worried sick, yes. There’s already a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a warning of something not-right afoot that has nothing — or little — to do with their enemies. The Bando Gora don’t listen to reason, that’s true, and Obi-Wan’s getting more practice with his saber than with his diplomatic skills, yes, but past the initial horror there is a simplicity to the mission that is often lacking in a Jedi’s life. Here, there is an enemy that is only an enemy, and one doesn’t have to dwell on the degrees of wrong that people can be.

Master Tapal doesn’t seem as at ease with it, though, and when Luminara ventures that the Bando Gora are uniformly wicked Tapal frowns and sits all three of them down for a lecture on decisions and duress as if they were padawans. Luminara accepts the lesson with her head bowed, and Obi-Wan adds to his extensive list of things to not bring up in front of the masters. Knight Krell looks doubtful about it all.

Obi-Wan doesn’t know Krell all that well—they weren’t crechemates and their masters’ missions had never overlapped, so at best he has seen the man in passing. Luminara he knows and likes and trusts; no matter what, she can be relied upon to be Luminara about things. Tapal had done his turn as a course instructor when Obi-Wan had been an initiate, so he knows him the way one knows one’s teachers. Krell is an unknown factor, and Obi-Wan doesn’t like unknowns. For now, he blames the distant discomfort on that. 

“Do you know where this will end?” Krell asks him abruptly. They’ve just cleared out a cell of cultists on an agrarian moon, and now the tortured bodies of the Bando Gora victims are documented and night is bright with pyres. 

“Where?” Obi-Wan echoes cautiously. “Or when?” Krell shrugs both sets of shoulders. “Either way, no. I’m no seer.”

“Would you want to? Know, I mean.” He turns and eyes Krell dubiously. Would he want to know the future? The future is uncertain, always, malleable down to the last moment, and yet the future is absolute, predicted, inescapable. 

“Is there something you wish to discuss, Knight Krell?” he asks instead of answering. Krell stares for a long moment, then shakes his head. 

“I simply worry,” he says slowly, “about corruption.” Behind him the fire crackles. It seems too loud. 

“We’ll find the Bando Gora at their source and eliminate them,” Obi-Wan says firmly. “They cannot hide forever.” 

“Of course,” says Krell, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “I just… have a bad feeling about all this.”

They hit a dead end a planet later, with no way to trace the Bando Gora cell here further on, so Tapal orders them back to Coruscant. It’s alright. They’re the third-to-last group out, and the last one to return will undoubtedly be Quinlan Vos’s or Master Leun’s because they have tracking-specific skills and that is that. Tapal says they’ve done well, but it’s still an empty-handed return. Obi-Wan tries to bury frustration in meditation and sits between Luminara, who is sulking under her mantras, and Krell, who is loudly projecting the concept of an army of rotting, shambling corpses puppeteered by some shadowy and Sith-adjacent force. As reasonable as such a concern may be, Obi-Wan thinks, fussing over it will do no one any good. Surely anyone looking to do battle against the Jedi would want them thrown off balance, dwelling on nightmares and hypotheticals. It’s best not to give anyone the pleasure.

As soon as they land on Coruscant, however, they are intercepted by Dooku in full senatorial regalia who appears to have been waiting to ambush them. He nods at Tapal, looks through Krell and past Luminara, and zeroes in on Obi-Wan with a too-intense manner that surely serves him well in the Senate. 

“Knight Kenobi. You need to see to your master.” His dark eyes are bloodshot, like he hasn’t been sleeping, and for a moment Obi-Wan thinks he sees a vision—a different man in different robes, but the same exhausted bloodshot eyes and greying hair styled the same way, stalking through the empty halls of a government building. He blinks, and the vision vanishes. 

“Of course, Senator. I will look in on Master Sifo-Dyas as well. Is there anything else you require?” The words fall out more easily, all clipped and distant formality to match Dooku’s own. 

“Yes,” Dooku replies. “Whatever he’s gotten himself into, stop him. There’s enough danger—” He stops, glances sharply over his shoulder at something Obi-Wan can’t see, then shakes his head. “The Bando Gora are just one symptom of a greater illness plaguing the Republic.”

“Then the corruption must be excised, Senator,” says Krell. Dooku blinks and looks at him like he’d been previously unaware of his presence. 

“First it must be _found_ ,” Dooku says, then turns on his heel and vanishes into the crowd.)

——————

Obi-Wan returns from the hunt for the Bando Gora looking pale and weary, but he greets Qui-Gon with his usual politeness and offers to make tea. It’s a relief to see him again, a beacon in the dark, and even more of a relief that he doesn’t ask about Xanatos. Of course he understands, Obi-Wan of all people always understands, and Qui-Gon is grateful for it. It’s just past mistakes, a past Qui-Gon has long turned away from. 

(Of course Obi-Wan understands. He’d understood from the first day Qui-Gon had been forced to take him as an apprentice, from the first time he’d heard of Xanatos’s fall, from the first time the man had reappeared and Qui-Gon had jumped to his defense. He’d understood, he understands, Xanatos had been _wanted_ , and Obi-Wan himself was not.)

They sit in silence for a long moment, and the table between them briefly feels like the void of space. Then Obi-Wan smiles his usual bright, slightly sardonic smile. 

“I met Anakin on the way in, did you know? He and Master Plo picked up an initiate on Shili— I think you’ve been replaced as his favorite Jedi.” 

“Oh?” says Qui-Gon. Shili. Right. Somehow that seems a lifetime ago. 

“He says she bit Master Yoda. I don’t suppose anyone can surpass that.”

And they share tea and don’t talk about Xanatos or the Bando Gora or any thoughts of impending doom, and for a little while things are just how they’ve always been. 

(Of course they are. They’ve gone through this ritual a dozen times, the shallow keeping of company between people who won’t _talk_ to each other. They’ll go through the motions this time too, like any other time, and gain no substantive benefit beyond the tea itself.

Of course they aren’t. In the Archives, Anakin picks his way through the stacks dragging a little togruta girl by the wrist, and Ahsoka has never seen a library this big in her life. She hasn’t seen a creature like Maul before either, but she bares her sharp little teeth in a smile and waves hello when Anakin introduces her, then waves hello some more when the old lady archivist swoops in to intervene. In his office in the senate, Sidious wraps a spare holoprojector in a cloak and stuffs it in a secret compartment beside his lightsaber, then Chancellor Palpatine opens the door and greets little Padmé, who has proven herself a thorn in everyone’s side. He looks down at her and says he has some _concerns_ about the senator from Serenno, and she looks up at him and remembers an overheard holocall where Dooku said he was hunting a Sith Lord influencing the Senate. She knows Palpatine to be a kind man, but she knows Jedi don’t lie, so she looks up and wonders if he’s an unwitting pawn in some dark sorcerer’s game even as she promises to tell him of any untoward behavior. It doesn't occur to him to _force_ the issue, and it doesn't occur to her to ask.

Far away, though not half as far as anyone expects, the queen of the Bando Gora smiles as she assesses her losses. So far, everything has gone to plan, even Xanatos’s spectacular underperformance. She has seen the future, after all, and it doesn’t belong to Jedi.)


	25. Chapter 25

Two weeks of constant supervision later, Qui-Gon is beginning to understand the idiom climbing the walls. Eerin is nice enough and Obi-Wan’s occasional presence is a boon, but he has started to dream of eyes boring into his skull. Sometimes dreams have deeper meanings, but even Qui-Gon is hesitant to attribute these to anything but his present circumstances. It still jolts him awake at odd hours, though, because sometimes the meaning of a thing is far lesser than the impact of it. He finds himself haunting the gardens by night all too often, listening for the echoes of those who have come before. They’re there as they have ever been, of course, but now he thinks he can sense something deep beneath them.

But what is it? That’s the greater mystery. It doesn’t whisper so much as it gives the sensation of breathing, of being, and that night Qui-Gon fancies whatever it is breathes slowly and silently beneath all of Coruscant. It reminds him of fungus or rot, something not entirely dissimilar to whatever drives the Bando Gora, and he has the foolish urge to follow it down, down, down and find within perhaps the answers to questions he isn’t sure how to phrase. Such things, he reasons, are the Living Force, what some primitive societies call the Wild Magic, and as such are surely within the purview of the Jedi.

“Master Jinn. You look... poorly.” He jerks out of his meditations to the sight of a pair of glowing eyes in the dark—then a moment later processes that they belong to Maul. The zabrak looks rather more comfortable in his second-hand brown robes now, and he has approached in the manner of a curious apprentice rather than a hunter in the night.

(Of course, apprentices can be wicked, spiteful creatures too, that should always be said. Maul is young and brash but he is a Sith by training and understands the long game by necessity. It may, true, all be a trick. His master may simply mean to use this Xanatos as a tool against the Jedi and then discard him before ascending to glory with Maul at his right hand. He may. But he may not. And even if he did—was Maul to just accept such treatment? Surely any Sith Lord worth his salt would balk at it, and Maul’s head is full of stories of his ancient forebears and apprentices who have ascended to glory with their hands around their masters’ throats. One to have power, one to crave it—and strive for it, new era or no.

There is a reason Sidious has kept him from books.)

“The healers say I’m unwell,” Qui-Gon replies, and it isn’t a lie. “I’m trying to meditate,” he adds. Maul stares at him. There is no malice in the look itself, but for a moment he can see a flash of the monster behind it.

“You can feel it too, can’t you?” Maul asks. “Like the makashi-juur did.”

“Feel it?” Qui-Gon echoes. Maul’s tattooed mouth twists into a smirk.

“You are looking for it, and now you can sense it. The power of the Dark Side that thrives despite the lies of the Jedi.” It’s a nice string of practiced words, so Qui-Gon waits silently for the follow up. “Under the ground, I think. Something was buried here, but the Dark Side remains.”

“And the Temple sits atop it?” Qui-Gon asks mildly. The Sith apprentice nods. “That seems like useful information.”

“I couldn’t find anything in the Archive,” Maul says, then carefully sits down cross-legged just out of arm’s reach. “Has it always been here?”

“It seems... ancient,” Qui-Gon hedges. How ancient? He doesn’t know. The Temple has been on Coruscant since the Great Hyperspace War, in some form or another, and before that stretch eras of myth and mystery—times before Mandalore was Mandalore, before modern hyperspace routes, before Coruscant held sway over the galaxy. What was Coruscant before it was Coruscant? An ancient human homeworld, he thinks, but that’s unproven too. Too many questions that come without answers, but what is a Jedi’s lot but to seek answers? ”Do you want to see where it leads?" 

(They are found at sunrise, Qui-Gon out cold on a patch of dead grass and Maul watching, silent and curious.)

———————

"But did he find anything?" For a moment Qui-Gon doesn’t recognize the voice. A child. Xanatos? Obi-Wan? Ky? Time and space drift back into alignment. None of those, then. Anakin, seeming almost ordinary today.

“No idea,” now _that_ is Obi-Wan, snappish and annoyed before he masters himself. “Not enough, anyway, since they came back.”

“Oh,” says Anakin. “What would they have brought back?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Obi-Wan, “as I hadn’t found it myself.”

“That sounds complicated,” says Anakin. “Aren’t Jedi supposed to know stuff?” 

“ _Stuff_ , indeed,” says Plo Koon from somewhere to the left. “But no one can know everything.”

“Yes,” says Obi-Wan, in a way that has historically meant _I agree and am also going to cite this in my next report and/or detailed complaint about someone’s behavior_. “Any news, Master Plo?”

“Your friend’s team tracked the Bando Gora to Baltizaar, but it seems they hit another dead end there. It is… curious.” 

“Maybe there’s a trick to it,” says Anakin. “A puzzle.”

“I’m sure,” says Plo Koon. “Of course, the trick is figuring out the trick, wouldn’t you say?” Anakin makes a frustrated noise and sits down—there’s a sudden weight at the foot of Qui-Gon’s bed. 

“ _Anakin_ ,” Obi-Wan says in the tone he usually uses for _Master, why are you doing this_. “Master Qui-Gon needs to _rest_.” 

“You said he was feeling all better before!” Anakin whines, and the weight shifts. “Hey, Master, do you hear me? You’re making everyone upset, so you’d better get better again for real this time!”

“Anakin, please,” says Obi-Wan. “That’s enough.” The boy ignores him. 

“ _Especially_ Obi-Wan! And he shouldn’t be upset because he’s nice, and Master Plo says Jedi are supposed to take care of their apprentices!” Yes, they are, aren’t they? Some Jedi are better at it than others, and some Jedi sit on the Council and don’t take apprentices for decades and decades until they have the chance to steal the Chosen One out from someone else’s nose. 

“I’m not his apprentice anymore, you know,” Obi-Wan points out dryly. “It’s hardly his obligation _now_.” That’s technically true, but it rings wrong so Qui-Gon tries to force his eyes open. It doesn’t quite go to plan—the warm light of the Halls of Healing is almost blinding, and instead of interrupting and correcting his former apprentice all Qui-Gon manages to do is utter a garbled oath and sink further into his pillows.

“Cool!” says Anakin. “I only know that one in Huttese!”

——————

The first thing he does, when he is moderately recovered and getting glared at by various important masters, is plead Maul’s innocence. The whole experiment had been Qui-Gon’s own idea, after all, and if anything Maul had made an attempt at good behavior by sitting with him. Windu looks less than impressed. 

“Right, and you decided to _experiment_ with what is clearly a Dark Side technique in the middle of the Temple gardens _why_ , precisely?” 

“To test a theory,” Qui-Gon replies. (It’s true, it’s true, it’s the most sincere response he can give. All his life he has craved knowledge, an understanding of the Force and the galaxy itself beyond what the Jedi have compiled, beyond ancient magics and modern science. He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last and none of these stories end well.) 

“And how did that go?” 

He has to stop and think about that. How did it go? He’d reached out into the dark, yes, he remembers that, tried to follow its spread back beneath the ground and then… nothing. 

“… What does Maul say?” he asks instead. Windu frowns. 

“Not a damn thing.” Ah. 

“It didn’t work,” Qui-Gon says, honestly. “Do you know much about the Temple’s construction?” Windu’s frown deepens and he says that Dooku had asked the very same thing. 

——————

The Bando Gora are silent. For months on end there is no sign of them or of Xanatos, who seems to have vanished from the known galaxy. 

(Known being the keyword, and known by whom. Xanatos has vanished into the galactic underworld, and his actions are known to rather more people than those of the Bando Gora themselves. Of course, none of the people who see him would speak about it to a Jedi or to a Jedi’s contacts, because in many ways this is a galaxy onto itself. Here, you see, no one ever thought the Sith to truly be dead and gone, not when dark things had moved about much unchanged in thousands of years. The Sith once walked more openly, true, but no one here has many doubts about _what_ Sidious and his predecessors are. It isn’t as though they try to hide here.) 

Qui-Gon escapes supervision (it’s a convoluted ploy involving several initiates, a holocron, and pudding) for long enough to meet with Dooku, once it has been long enough for people to let their guard down. (His hair is trimmed enough to make the unevenness look purposeful, and the Temple laundry means his robes are fresh and neat enough, but no amount of superficial fixes can detract from the strange wildness that has grown behind his eyes. Dooku’s senatorial robes and fur-lined cloak do little to hide the lightning scars or the bags under his eyes. They are both changed, and not for the better.)

“I hope your hunt goes better than ours,” Qui-Gon says, and Dooku gives a hollow laugh. 

“It begins to occur to me that we may not be the hunters,” he replies. 

(Far away on Kamino, a batch of clones is decanted. They are a preliminary test of genetic alterations, likely too flawed to serve their intended purpose, but they are the first of many. The day, somehow, grows colder.) 

“We are no one’s prey,” Qui-Gon replies, closing his hands around his teacup as Dooku _nearly_ shivers and adjusts his cloak instead. The old man opens his mouth to answer, but there’s a second jolt in the Force just then—a warning, an alarm ringing out from all corners than sends Qui-Gon leaping to his feet and Dooku going for his saber. 

(The enemy isn’t there, of course. At twelve points across the galaxy, at twelve investigative teams pursuing them, the Bando Gora have struck, and this time they have struck in earnest. Proof of _that_ is the woman standing with her foot on Quinlan Vos’s throat, staring down at him with a broad, hungry smile. 

“Do you know the color of the sky when it falls?” she asks. “It won’t be blue anymore. I’ve seen it.”

“Tell me, then,” he gasps out, and thanks the Force little Aayla isn’t there to see him struggling so. The woman laughs, and it’s not a happy sound.

“I’ll do far better, sweet Jedi. I’ll _show_ you.”)


	26. Chapter 26

Vos’s distress signal reaches someone who can hear it two hours later, but it’s a matter of seconds, if that, from the moment of his capture to when Aayla screams in terror and goes running for help. 

(That’s how the Force works, often. Time and space don’t matter so much, not when there is a connection between beings. Sometimes this connection forms naturally, sometimes it is nudged along by third parties who have a stake in it, sometimes it is purposely cultivated like the rare orchid that once graced Dooku’s rooms in the Temple and now sits and refuses to bloom in his new high rise apartment. In any case, a master and a student alike benefit from such a connection during a Jedi’s apprenticeship, the ability to share a degree of thoughts and emotions directly. Traditionally, the end of an apprenticeship signals the severance of such a connection in light of the apprentice being able to stand on their own. That doesn’t always go over as well as one would hope; though the Jedi are many, few among them enjoy being abruptly all alone with their thoughts. But that’s a digression—Aayla may not have seen her master’s capture but she felt it just as strongly.)

She runs, of course (there’s a sense of _of course_ to all this), to her master’s closest friend, and grabs Obi-Wan’s arm with an incoherent plea that he save the day. (She can’t run to Tholme, the old master who had trained Vos and at times minded her, who had once upon a time been a watchman at the edges of Wild Space. Tholme has taken up the mantle again and is far afield, looking and watching and documenting the changing of the tide.) Obi-Wan stops in the middle of setting up a dejarik board to give her his full attention, because that’s who he is as a person. Qui-Gon is proud of him—truly, truly, Obi-Wan is the better Jedi and the better man of the two of them, always was and always would be, even when he was young and full of spite. 

“We’ll find him,” Obi-Wan assures the tearful apprentice, and in that moment he looks like the sort of Jedi they wrote legends about. (He feels like a useless fraud lying to a frightened child.) “I promise, I’ll make sure he’s found.” Then he turns to Qui-Gon, exuding his usual calm. “Master—would you care to assist?”

Of course he would. (If his first thought is that it will get him out of the Temple, well, Obi-Wan doesn’t need to know that.) 

——————

By the time they leave they have Vos’s squad’s last known location and Nara Unduli, Master Leung, one of Windu’s informal minions called Knight Thaneel, and a coherent part of a story from little Aayla. Vos had been captured in an ambush, the rest of his team were likely dead, their attacker had been a woman — like the Bando Gora, but different somehow, a lightsaber duelist using a style Aayla didn’t recognize — and there had been a cave in a towering mountain of weird, blueish stone and viney plants with red spiky leaves. That’s enough to place their capture on a specific section of a Hijoan moon, which if nothing else should give Leung a starting point to track them from. The elderly cathar takes charge of the mission, orders Obi-Wan and Luminara to handle the navigation, and stares coldly (she doesn’t glare, that’s beneath a Jedi) until Qui-Gon and Thaneel retreat from the controls and resolve themselves, Qui-Gon supposes, to being passengers on this rescue mission. 

“At least we know where—” Thaneel starts, once they’ve taken off and entered hyperspace, and then there’s an audible yelp and Aayla falls out of a luggage compartment. Thaneel swears loudly and Qui-Gon flinches back hard enough to knock into a supply box, partially because of the apprentice’s sudden appearance and partially because he’s suddenly very aware of another presence aboard ship. (It’s easier to practice vanishing in the Archive, becoming one of the many ghosts and memories among the stacks only to drop out and startle unwary readers. It’s a petty game, but it’s easier and more intuitive than training on Mustafar had been.)

“We’re going to help!” Aayla announces. She’s dried her tears and is clutching her saber and looks very determined. She’s also a child. “I—I can’t abandon Master Quin!”

“Who—” Obi-Wan sticks his head out from the cockpit. “Aayla? What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to help!” Aayla insists. “And you all would’ve said no if I asked and Master Quin wouldn’t leave me to get tortured to death so I’m not leaving!”

“I doubt they’d eject you into the void of space, no,” says Maul cooly as he materializes from the engine room. He catches Qui-Gon’s eye and nods briefly. “Master Jinn. You all left before I could offer my assistance in the hunt, and the padawan asked for aid.” 

“Well, this is just becoming a party,” says Obi-Wan. Thaneel makes a disparaging noise, Aayla sniffles, and Maul looks downright amused. 

———————

The moon’s landing strip is operated, it appears, by a pair of droids, both of which are very adamant about the place having been evacuated. Thaneel frowns.

“Evacuated? By whom?” he asks.

“By Management, sir,” says one of the droids. Qui-Gon can practically hear the capital letter. Thaneel frowns harder.

“Are you capable of clarifying that statement?” he asks. Were the droid organic, it would likely look dubious, but as is it just tilts its head to the left. It’s some old model of protocol droid, Qui-Gon’s seen similar ones generally in the Outer Rim or in other poor spaceports ever since he was an apprentice, and the other seems to be a similar model altered for more direct mechanical work. 

“Pardon me, sir, but I do not comprehend what you mean by that.” 

“Who’s Management?” Qui-Gon cuts in. You have to be direct with droids, he’s learned. 

“Management is Management, sir,” it replies, which is profoundly unhelpful. Leung steps in.

“Did a group of Jedi pass through here recently?” she asks. 

“Oh. Affirmative.” It gives a brief but correct description of Vos and two others. “Have they been misplaced?” Maul scoffs. 

“Do people often get misplaced here?” Leung asks gently. The droid replies in the affirmative again. “Is that why Management ordered the evacuation?”

“That is probable,” says the droid. Upon prodding, it elaborates that Vos’s team had arrived at roughly the same time as the evacuation order, and there had been some disagreement about allowing them to pass that had been resolved (through, Qui-Gon presumes, either judicious application of mind tricks or some non-Force-fueled hand-waving about whom the Jedi answer to), and they had passed through the port, the surrounding workers’ village, and headed out onto the surface itself. Of that there is security footage, at least. 

“Vos went through Hijo last time,” Obi-Wan supplies, frowning at the footage, “but just the planet itself. I wonder why he came back.”

“Maybe he did the—” Aayla makes a theatrical holding gesture. “—the thing, and saw something?”

“Possibly,” Obi-Wan muses. “In which case we have to ask what he got a hold of. Did he mention finding anything new back at the Temple?” Aayla shakes her head no.

“He said it was a dead end— _literally_ dead, he said, because of how the Bando Gora are.” Thaneel rolls his eyes at the pun but Leung hides a smile. “But he wanted to try again, so he went…”

(So he went, among many others, and so the second time he passed through Baltizaar he received a gift, a broken shard of a horned helm that granted him a vision of a blue stone mountain and vines with red leaves, and of something very important standing in a cave, so off he had gone. And the vision hadn’t lied, you see, the answer he’d sought really had been waiting for him there. And now the answer has him strung up in a torture chamber drugged to the metaphorical gills.)

“So he went,” says Leung. “And so we shall follow. If we are lucky, we shall find the trail of all three of our, er, _misplaced_ Jedi.”

————————

They find two bodies, arranged in a mockery of a funeral pyre. No fear lingers here—these deaths were clean and quick, at least, two dead Jedi who didn’t have a chance to scream. Qui-Gon doesn’t know them, though Aayla whimpers and recoils and Obi-Wan blanches so maybe they do. Did. (Of course they did, Aayla in the vague way apprentices know knights, Obi-Wan in the way dutiful students know their seniors, but they both did. Luminara knew them too, though she stays blank-faced and very still at Master Leung’s side. It takes time to grow into the almost-callous detachment of a Jedi master, and even then the loss of a fellow Jedi is a blow.) Leung bows her head and murmurs something half-audible about being at peace in the Force, and Unduli bows along with her. 

Thaneel clicks his tongue in exasperation. 

“Really. Master Windu won’t like this report.” 

“Master Windu doesn’t like _anything_ ,” Qui-Gon says before he can stop himself. He sighs. “Aayla didn’t mention either of them in her vision, they were dead before Vos’s capture. Surely you weren’t expecting otherwise.” 

“One must keep faith in one’s fellows,” says Thaneel, who gives off the air of a man who has never experienced faith as a concept. 

“Enough, you two,” says Leung. “We cannot help them now, but bickering like children does only harm. Aayla, come and assist me—” She stops abruptly, because Maul is crouched beside the corpses regarding them much too closely. “Do you have something to add?”

“How certain are you that this Vos is a victim in all this?” Maul asks. Obi-Wan’s eyes narrow.

“How do you mean?” 

“These men were killed with a lightsaber, by someone who knew how to use it,” Maul replies. The implication of that hangs in the air for a long moment, before Aayla shakes her head no again. Leung folds her arms. (She knows this already, there is a hint of burning about them that is the telltale sign of a lightsaber wound.)

“Well, we all have lightsabers and know how to use them,” she says dryly. “I’d imagine we’re well-prepared.”

“So did they,” says Maul bluntly, but he drops the topic and stands aside. 

From there, Leung takes full charge. (Beyond having a cathar’s naturally heightened senses, Leung has had decades to hone her skills with the Force and make herself one of the Jedi’s best trackers. She can discern every detail, every trace, and more importantly she knows what each one means.) They leave the bodies and trek through the strangely silent landscape, past outcroppings of blueish rock and red-leafed vines that people keep tripping on, then down a narrow ravine. At the bottom, Leung pauses, sharp eyes scanning the ground. (North, or south? Her prey had gone both ways, but which one first? North. Better see the scene of the attack first, it may have more clues.)

“This way,” she orders, and before long Aayla gasps aloud. 

“Here! It was here—he was here!” She rushes forward, only for Unduli to catch her and hold her back. “Knight Unduli—the cave I meant, it’s that one!”

Here there are signs of a struggle anyone can see, and the burn marks and too-precise slices indicative of a wild lightsaber duel. Two people, with the Bando Gora watching, Leung explains, and then one fell and was taken captive.

“Two duelists,” she explains with a pointed look in Maul’s direction. “One of whom, I’m sure, is our killer.”

The cave shows some minimal signs of habitation—a scattering of deathsticks, unlit, and a perfectly straight set of cuts along the wall where someone drew a pair of sabers. Beyond that, even Leung can find nothing useful, so they turn to go southwards again and Qui-Gon turns to ask Obi-Wan if he happens to be able to recognize the deathstick brand, but Obi-Wan isn’t there. He so rarely is, nowadays—

—Obi-Wan isn’t there. He isn’t with Unduli and Thaneel, either, and he isn’t fending Maul off from demonstrating a better lightsaber grip to Aayla, and he isn’t perched somewhere high overlooking the ravine, and he isn’t _there_. Qui-Gon rounds on Leung, but she’s noticed too, and she barks the relevant question at Unduli, who had been paying attention to Leung, and then the real panic sets in. Obi-Wan had been with them when they’d found the bodies, and then Aayla remembers him helping her climb down into the ravine, but not after that, Thaneel had been too busy being sure Maul would turn on them, and Maul, apparently, had nothing to say on the topic.

Qui-Gon tries, really does try, to reach out for the cut edge of the apprentice-bond through the Force, but it’s like he’s being blocked off. Surely not by Obi-Wan himself, so by a third party, which means—

“They got him,” he blurts, at the same time as Leung snaps to go south _now_ , and they run. 

(Two for the price of one! This new captive had been slightly harder to overpower, but that was part of the fun with Jedi wasn’t it? And now he is strung up beside his friend, stirring slowly into painful wakefulness. 

“Quin…?” Obi-Wan whispers. His voice is rough. How was he captured? What had happened? Quinlan opens a bleary eye and manages to crack a grin. 

“Hey you. Gotta stop meeting like this.” He tries to chuckle at his own joke, but winds up coughing instead. There’s blood on his mouth. Obi-Wan exhales, tries to project calm, and finds he can’t project anything at all. Before he can process it properly — why, why is his mind moving so slowly? — a figure steps out of the shadows in front of them. A woman, with glowing yellow eyes and a shock of white hair, twin sabers at her hips and an expression on her face like a well-fed predator. 

“Hullo there,” she says, and her voice is odd, something wrong with the tenor of it. “I was wondering if you’d wake up soon. You aren’t very impressive, you know—but then again none of you are.”

“None of us?” Obi-Wan asks, cautiously. “Jedi?” The woman laughs.

“Oh, that too. But I was being specific. My old master’s grandpadawans—you’re all disgraceful, pointless, useless! But maybe I’ll find use for you yet.” She runs a hand over Obi-Wan’s cheek, almost gentle but not quite. 

“Hey, c’mon,” says Vos, protective under it all. “I thought _I_ was your type.” The woman grins—or bares her teeth, rather, it’s a feral gesture. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not tired of you yet, pet. You both—yes, you both could prove valuable pawns in this game. Better that you are _mine_.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to write two different fics at once, so now Thaneel is played by Alexis Denisof in my head. Whoops? Anyway, say hi to the _other_ arc villain: Komari Vosa, leader of the Bando Gora and former apprentice to Dooku. She's a delight, from a certain point of view.


	27. Chapter 27

The positive side of this, though Qui-Gon certainly doesn't want to think of it as a positive, is that they know their enemy is here. One moon is easier to search than a galaxy, and if Vos is alive then Obi-Wan likely is too. It's cold comfort. Qui-Gon wants to reach out through the Force and find his apprentice, tell him to hang on, the rescue will be right there (just like every time before) but the block on Obi-Wan's presence doesn't budge. (Hitting it repeatedly gives a similar effect to repeatedly running into a wall, which is to say Qui-Gon is now running with a splitting headache and the beginnings of a nose bleed. Even Aayla knows better than to do that.)

Leung leads them southward through the ravine, this time at a pace that would be breakneck for anyone not augmenting their reflexes with the Force. Even for Jedi, it’s bound to be exhausting after a while, and Thaneel is already looking rather winded. (Leung is banking on the terrain playing to their benefit. The walls of the ravine are steep, and even a trained Force-user like their enemy seems to be would have a hard time overpowering an opponent and dragging them _up_. No, much more likely that they are on the same level, or in the manner seen previously in the Bando Gora, underground in the dark, perhaps in one of the many abandoned mining tunnels.

It’s a sound and sensible assessment, though perhaps one she should share out loud.)

Eventually (it feels like a lifetime but isn’t more than ten minutes), Leung stops sharply. Maul and Unduli pull up short beside her, Aayla clutching onto Unduli’s arm. Qui-Gon narrowly avoids collision and promptly takes an elbow to the ribs from Thaneel, who has excellent reflexes in combat but apparently _only_ then. He rounds on the man in a moment of blind fury before his brain catches up to reality. They're at the edge of a partially sealed up mine shaft, and the by now familiar reek of rot emanates from below them. The durasteel seal over the shaft has been cut, leaving the telltale melted edges of lightsaber damage. Deep below the ground, Qui-Gon can sense movement, but movement isn't enough, is it? He glares at Thaneel then turns to address the old cathar.

"Is—are they being held here?" he asks. Leung frowns.

"This is where the trail I was following stops. Others have passed around this area—I do not doubt there are other entrances."

"If they're here, we don't have _time_ —" Qui-Gon snaps, even though he knows it's stupid. If Vos and Obi-Wan have been kept alive this long, then the enemy clearly sees some value in keeping them that way. If they have been killed, then it is already too late to change anything. He knows this, he does, but the knowledge seems quite apart from the current situation.

"We cannot just go charging in," says Thaneel. "These people have already killed two Jedi, who knows what they're capable of."

"Master Thaneel is right," says Unduli quickly. "We have to be strategic about this." Qui-Gon stifles the urge to throw her headfirst down the mine shaft and call _that_ strategy. (That one, at least is jarring enough to make him think something’s wrong with him.) They split the group, not that there’s any combination that Thaneel doesn’t criticize, and Qui-Gon, Unduli, and Thaneel go down the shaft while Leung takes Aayla and Maul to look for another way in. (It isn’t that she’s particularly trusting of the Sith apprentice, only that rather trusts Master Nu’s assessment of him. There’s a problem to solve, a test of his skills, and until it’s resolved he’s unlikely to turn in his allies.)

“We must be ready for anything,” says Thaneel, as much to himself as to Unduli or Qui-Gon.

“The longer we wait, the more ready they will be for us,” Qui-Gon replies, then tugs experimentally at the broken seal. It opens, and dim light reveals a rickety staircase along the wall, twisting its way down into the putrid dark. Unduli shifts uncomfortably behind him. (A lesser woman would have perhaps shivered.) “Come on," he orders. "And stay close."

—————

It's silent as they descend, with the only sounds Qui-Gon can hear being their own careful footsteps and quiet, muffled breathing. The sensation of movement deep underground hasn't changed, and the stupid idea that they've come in undetected wanders through Qui-Gon's mind. Of course it's stupid. If there's a Force-sensitive among the Bando Gora, especially one _waiting_ for more Jedi, they're likely being tracked as they go. Still, the false sense of security _lingers_ and he can feel Unduli relaxing slightly behind him. (Slightly. Lumina is tense as a coiled spring anyway, relaxation is an incremental matter.)

"Careful," Qui-Gon hisses.

"Of what, now?" That's Thaneel, radiating frustration.

"Mind tricks. Something is..." Qui-Gon gestures vaguely, then realizes they probably can't see him. "Something is trying to dull our attention. Stay alert."

"Understood," says Unduli, and digs her nails into the palm of her hand. (Pain, she has found, tends to cut through foggy things like mind tricks or fear or hunger. It's not a healthy approach to alertness.) Thaneel makes a low noise of annoyance.

"Try not to lead us directly into a trap, Master Jinn," he says. Qui-Gon wants to roll his eyes.

"The Force is with us. Just keep your eyes open."

—————

(The problem doesn’t lie in their eyes. There’s gaseous calming agent filling the mine, hidden under the heavy smell of rot. Given enough time it can lull even the most self-controlled into a vaguely sleepy relaxation, unless an antidote is administered or the affected party ceases to inhale it. It matters little to the Bando Gora themselves, walking husks that they are, and all the less to their leader. On a normal person, the effects would take minutes. Trained Jedi can resist somewhat longer, but it’s a matter of prolonging the inevitable.

Climbing down a side entrance, Leung has a cloth wrapped around her muzzle in an attempt to ward off stench—quite unbeknownst to her it is doing double duty. Little Aayla has the worst of it, her grip keeps slipping and she feels dizzy, though she doesn’t dare show such weakness now. Maul and Leung trade off catching her, though Maul has quickly descended back into mumbling familiar mantras.)

By the time Qui-Gon’s feet hit something that isn’t stairs, a part of him is certain there’s nothing here. (There’s nothing there and Obi-Wan is surely fine, he’s a bright boy, a competent boy, a good Jedi.) Another part of him is yelling at the top of its hypothetical lungs that this is a trick. He can smell blood from where Unduli’s cut herself, though she assured him it’s nothing.

“Careful,” he says, one more time, pointlessly, and draws his saber—a weapon and a light source. Thaneel and Unduli follow suit, and for a moment the soft, blue-green light is beautiful. Then the brilliance fades to reveal a chamber strewn with desiccated bodies.

“The misplaced?” Unduli suggests softly.

“Perhaps,” Thaneel replies. “These look... old.”

There is a single doorway visible, so Qui-Gon steps over a corpse and goes to open it. It clicks once, twice, then gives when he shoves hard, then a series of other clicking noises radiates out overhead. That... isn’t good. He looks around for a source, then Thaneel hastily elbows him out of the way.

“Look out!” He trips and nearly falls, but evades a blast of green fire. That one seemed like a warning shot, but it’s quickly followed by two others.

“They’re in the walls!” Unduli calls, then Force-pushes one of their attackers so that the next blast goes wide.

Only one direction to run, Qui-Gon thinks idly. They’re being herded like bantha.

————

The Bando Gora are many, but they can only do so much against a Jedi, even one drugged to the metaphorical gills. Unduli is the quickest of the three of them, but all three make short work of disarming and disabling (which is to say, maiming) the first wave of combatants. Another follows, and a third, and a fourth, and by then Unduli is fumbling her footwork and Qui-Gon feels like he’s moving through molasses. Thaneel is swaying on his feet. 

“This isn’t working,” Unduli mutters. 

“There has to be an end to them,” Thaneel answers, even though she’s likely talking to herself and not to him. (Technically speaking, yes, but not in any way that matters. The Bando Gora are the lost, and their numbers are growing each day. The only way to stop the spread is to destroy the infection at its source, and who would think to do that for that reason? The Bando Gora prey on the weak, normally. Even now, no one thinks of their victims as much more than statistics. Of course, it’s different if it’s your friend, your child, your teacher, your apprentice gone missing, but by and large it is people no one would miss.)

“Oh? Out of wind already? Pity, pity.” The woman’s voice is _off_ somehow, and Qui-Gon turns awkwardly on the spot until he sees her perched on a broken overhead walkway. Her hair is short and white and she twirls a pair of curved-handled lightsabers, grinning so wide it would make a person’s face hurt. The Bando Gora have frozen in place at her words, and drop back as one when gives a brief nod. 

“ _You_ ,” Thaneel says suddenly. “I remember you.” The woman tilts her head, still smiling. 

“Oh? Well, you’re quite a forgettable man, you know.” She passes her gaze over Unduli, who looks ill, and then Qui-Gon. “Now, it’s funny. He remembers me, I don’t remember him. You, though, you I remember—do you know me?” There is something distantly familiar about the cast of her face, but nothing he can put a name to. 

“Care to reintroduce yourself?” he asks. “Or we can skip the pleasantries and you can _free my apprentice right now._ ” Trying to mind trick the Bando Gora had been like pushing on rotten wood. This is different, worse—he pushes, and it sinks, like into some sort of viscous and oily liquid. He recoils from it in disgust, steps on the hem of his robes and loses his balance, knocking into one of the durasteel-lined walls. 

“Aww, come on, Jinn,” the woman practically coos. “Surely you can do better than that!” Unduli takes a protective step forward, and the woman laughs. “I wouldn’t do that. Bad things happen to brave little girls.” 

“I’m not little,” Unduli snaps. In the moment, she looks awfully young. (She is, really, awfully young, barely a few months Obi-Wan’s senior. With the Bando Gora and their leader so readily distracted, though, another young girl is being very brave. Aayla can barely keep her eyes open, but she’s forcing herself forward, one foot in front of the other. Her master needs her, and so does Knight Kenobi, so she’s not going to fail now. Master Leung is standing watch, and Aayla follows closely behind the Sith apprentice Maul, who is carefully burning his way through empty holding cells to find the captives. Aayla would rather be anywhere else, but mostly safe within the Temple with Master Vos, and Maul would prefer battle to sneaking, but this a necessary act as well. She stumbles, and the Sith takes her firmly by the wrist. His hand is cold like this place is cold, the sort the chills to the bone and right through it, but he’s gentle with her. It’s an open secret among the younger apprentices, he’s always gentle with them.) 

“Sure,” says the woman, and she leaps from her perch. It’s a graceful motion, fluid really, but only serves to turn Qui-Gon’s stomach more. 

“I’d only meant to keep the boys, but you’ll do fine too. _You_ —“ She turns to Qui-Gon. “—there’s a price on. And that one…” She trails off, eyeing Thaneel. 

“Komari, please,” he says. “It—it is you, isn’t it? Komari Vosa?” (Little Komari, sitting at Dooku’s side with her hands folded and her eyes downcast, long brown hair in a neat bun. Little Komari, brave and quiet and lost at Baltizaar. Little Komari, decades lost and found.) Thaneel steps forward, cautious and tentative. “Komari—what have they done to you?”

“Done to me?” she echoes. “Sweet thing, there’s nothing _done_ to me. I’m free.” Her eyes are yellow in the saberlight, nearly glowing. “Do you know the color of the sky when it falls? I do. I’ve seen it. Death is the answer at the end of the question, and it is coming for you all.”

“The death of the Republic,” says Qui-Gon, thinking of the vision in the Kyber Temple. Vosa shakes her head. 

“No,” she says. “Just death.” And the curved sabers in her hands flash red before Qui-Gon can blink, and Thaneel drops slowly to his knees, mouth still open in an unformed plea. There is a burnt hole through his heart, and he pitches forward and lies there, still and silent and dead. 

“No—!” Unduli hisses, but by then it’s far too late. 

“Just death,” says Vosa. “Isn’t that worse?” And with a laugh entirely too light for the situation she launches into an attack.


	28. Chapter 28

Time seems like it has slowed, but Komari Vosa moves like lightning. The sabers in her hands are corrupted red mimicries of Dooku’s familiar blades, and the motion is familiar too— the old man had dabbled in jar’kai, though he never favored it, and had passed those lessons on to all his students. Komari, it appears, had taken to them better than most. 

(It’s a specific variation on jar’kai, heavily tinged with the makashi dueling style Dooku favors and ideal for overpowering a single opponent. Jar’kai as it is normally taught is better suited to facing crowds of enemies, but all forms have their variations and all practitioners have their preferences. Qui-Gon, for instance, never saw the value in makashi, knowing full well that even an opponent trained in the ways of the Force would bring backup more often than not. Dooku, then, would argue the benefits of striking down the deadliest enemy first before moving on to the subordinates. Here, Vosa carries on her former master’s teachings and sets specifically upon one target. Why not? Thaneel is dead on the floor, the Bando Gora serve her, and the little knight is hardly more than a child stumbling in the darkness.) 

Qui-Gon raises his lightsaber, but even as he does so he knows it’s too slow, damnably slow, she’s going to hit him—the crimson blades spark when they hit green, and Vosa lets out a high pitched giggle. Unduli. The girl is in a defensive stance halfway in front of Qui-Gon, her narrow shoulders squared and her stance steady. (She has trained until the movements are instinctive. She can fight and defend in her sleep, her master had said, which is rather close to what she is doing now.)

“Ooh, aren’t you sweet?” says Vosa. Then her voice drops. “He wants to kill you, you know.” Unduli doesn’t reply, just tries to force Vosa’s sabers back up. Qui-Gon quickly moves to help her. Vosa may have an advantage on them, but she isn’t _that_ strong, so she leaps back gracefully and twirls her blades. “He wants to kill you. I saw it in his heart.”

“No I don’t,” Qui-Gon says. He’s pretty sure he’s slurring his words. “Don’t listen to her.”

“Throw her down the shaft and call _that_ strategy,” Vosa sing-songs. “Wouldn’t it be fun?” That last part is addressed at Qui-Gon, presumably. 

“Of course not,” he answers. Fun isn’t the right word, not to him. Relief, maybe, the overwhelming urge to make everything _shut up and listen_ , but not fun. “I’d sooner throw _you_ down a mineshaft and call it winning.” 

“Oh yes,” says Vosa. “Bring the sky down upon us.” She twirls the blades again. “Well? Don’t stand there— you want me dead, so _try_!” She gestures at the walkway above her. It’s damaged, a few well-aimed hits would take the whole thing down and the ceiling likely along with it, burying the Bando Gora surrounding them, Vosa herself, and anyone else on the ground. So _try_. He can, can’t he? 

No, that’s not right. The Bando Gora don’t fear death, they embrace it. Vosa _wants_ him to attack—whether to strike her down or to open himself to some yet unseen harm. And at the mouth of the pit he’d wanted to turn on his own allies rather than save Obi-Wan. This, right here, is the Dark Side in its most base form. How _interesting_. (A part of him wants to know exactly how Vosa fell so far. It’s academic curiosity, and surely understanding it would be useful, and perhaps something similar had happened to Xanatos, perhaps something similar happened to all those who succumbed to the Dark. There’s no time for such researches now—perhaps Dooku would know more, or perhaps the late Hego Damask had mentioned it in his researches. More likely, that latter one.) 

“Master Jinn,” Unduli says quietly. He blinks, comes back to himself. “How do we proceed?” 

“Defensively,” he answers firmly. “We’re outnumbered here, but we can last— some time.” Unduli’s sharp eyes flicker to Thaneel’s body, then back up. 

“They’ll get bored,” she suggests. “Distracted.” 

“Dear child,” says Vosa. “I have more time than you.” And she attacks again. 

(She’s right, in that Qui-Gon and Unduli will likely succumb to the drug in the air in around ten minutes, and she can definitely goad them for that long. She’s wrong, in that while her attention is focused Leung has been picking off her patrols, one at a time, and in the depths of the mine little Aayla smells blood—living blood. She tugs Maul sharply in that direction, but he’s clearly smelt it too. There, through one more altered cell, a door disguised as part of the wall — Maul makes short work of _that_ , he’s angry and tired and angry at being tired and in dire need of something to destroy — and then they stumble into a room with clean transparisteel partitions and two men hanging by their wrists from some machine. How _interesting_. Maul likes machines, and this one seems to be dosing its victims with something that leaves their Force signatures negligible and their ability to fight back even lesser. 

“Master!” Aayla gasps, and pulls free to run to one of the captives, but slams palms first into the transparisteel instead. It’s a puzzle, probably, one of those things where entering the right code in the right place will open one panel and close another — Maul has seen something similar before, though at the moment he can’t quite recall where. It had been annoying then, and at the moment he wants nothing less than to bother with _puzzles_ , so he pulls Aayla back and takes his saber to the partitions instead. They hold for a little while, but not long enough, and then collapse with such a cacophonous noise that it jerks both Aayla out of the near-stupor into which she has crumpled. He cuts the captives free too and pokes Kenobi with his foot when the man drops to the ground. 

“Consider yourself lucky that I am better at rescues than you are,” Maul says. 

“Don’t want your rescue,” Kenobi mutters back. “We—we’re bait. It’s some—she was a Jedi— Dooku’s — she wants Master Qui-Gon.” He stops to try to breathe more steadily. Aayla is trying to tug the other Jedi to his feet with limited success. “She’ll have heard you break in,” Kenobi adds, accusatory. 

“Good for Master Jinn, isn’t that?” Maul answers, and about then is when Leung bursts in to order them all to run.)

The crash is definitely loud enough to be heard through the whole mine, and Qui-Gon would rather think it may be audible aboveground too if he wasn’t busy weaving through the crowd of Bando Gora like a drunken idiot trying to escape Vosa’s attacks. (It’s grossly undignified, but dignity is sometimes overrated in the face of survival.) The Bando Gora turn as one, and Vosa _screams_ in frustration. 

(Later, neither Qui-Gon nor Unduli would be able to swear to whether she screamed aloud or not. It doesn’t much matter, because when she screams it’s like a shockwave, powerful enough to knock Qui-Gon to his knees and send Unduli scrambling for cover with her saber forgotten and her hands over her ears. The Bando Gora don’t have much by way of self preservation instinct, so they stand stock still.)

“Kill them!” Vosa yells. “The interlopers—destroy them!” But that’s not as important, Qui-Gon thinks, as the vague, foggy presence he suddenly can sense again. _Obi-Wan_. Injured and ill and barely there, but alive. Mission accomplished, then, no need to linger. He summons Unduli’s dropped lightsaber, decapitates whatever Bando Gora are in range, grabs the girl and makes a break for wherever Obi-Wan’s presence is. 

“No, no, no— the stairs!” Unduli insists, but he ignores her. (No, he’s not being rational.) He’s also lost most sense of direction, so it’s the will of the Force that he nearly barrels into Leung, who’s got an unconscious Vos slung over her shoulders and Aayla clinging to her belt. Maul is half-dragging Obi-Wan behind her, but mutely shoves the man at Qui-Gon as soon as he processes his presence. (Obi-Wan slumps weakly against his former master’s shoulder when he’s caught. He’s half-sure this is some complex hallucination or corrupted vision, but at the moment he’s too exhausted to fight it. As far as visions he has had since waking here, this one is rather nice.) 

“We need to get out of here immediately,” says Leung. (She feels like that key part of a rescue has been rather overlooked, including by her.) 

“They’re coming to kill all of us,” Unduli answers. Maul bares his teeth and raises his saber. 

“Let them try,” he growls. The effect is somewhat lessened by the fact that he’s visibly unsteady on his feet. 

“Let them _not_ ,” says Leung with the patience of someone who trained three apprentices and never wants to teach again. 

“There you are.” That’s Vosa, somewhere above them. Qui-Gon turns to try to face her, but someone grabs him firmly by the shoulder and pulls. “Hey—you’re cheating! _Come back_!”

And oh he wants to. He wants to turn and fight and draw blood even as the edges of his vision start to get dark, to render onto her all the harm she’d done to what’s _his_ , all the harm she’d done onto Obi-Wan, onto the Jedi, onto Dooku— 

But he’s being dragged away, and Obi-Wan is whispering pleas for help, so all he can do is watch the weird glowing eyes in the dark. He thinks Vosa’s stare follows him down the hall and up a rickety ladder he barely manages to keep his grip on, through another sealed hatch that Leung slices through, and then out into clean air that tastes sweeter than air has any right to. 

Death is the answer at the end of the question. Death, just death. Isn’t that worse?

“We left him down there,” says Unduli softly, once they are all out and Maul has cut the ladder down behind them and jammed the hatch more or less back into place. “Thaneel—I—we left him down there.”

“He’s dead,” Qui-Gon says, and he should say something about being one with the Force. Death, just death. Unduli shivers. 

“Grenades,” says Maul, then gestures vaguely at the hatch. But they don’t _have_ grenades, or anything by way of firepower, and Qui-Gon doubts they can face Vosa’s forces twice in one day so instead they half-carry Vos and Obi-Wan back to the ship and make a full report. (Or, well, Leung and Unduli make the report. Aayla curls, shaken, at her unconscious master’s side, while Maul wanders the port looking for anything explosive. It’s a pointless search anyway. By the time reinforcements and healers arrive, the Bando Gora are long gone and Thaneel’s body has been left with the other dead Jedi, hands crossed over the too-clean wound through his heart.)

——————

There isn’t a satisfactory conclusion here, though Obi-Wan wakes properly just as they enter hyperspace and proceeds to insist on being interrogated immediately. Vos takes some hours longer, though he too wakes up before they reach Coruscant. He’s less willing to talk, for once, except to chide Aayla for coming after him and yell at Qui-Gon for letting her, as if he’d had anything to do with that at all. After that he falls silent and stares out a viewport and lets Obi-Wan do the talking. 

“Visions, you said?” Leung asks. Obi-Wan nods shortly. 

“Or hallucinations— I cannot be sure of their origin. They felt… real, in the moment.” He pauses. “It is difficult to recall details now, so I’m afraid I won’t be all that useful to you.”

“Any information will be useful,” Leung assures him. “What can you remember?”

“Death,” he says quietly. “Death like all the stars suddenly going out at once. A… a cessation of things. Of…” Another pause. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to describe it. Just a cessation.”

“The Force,” Vos cuts in. His voice is hoarse and his eyes are bloodshot. “The cessation of the Force.” And then he takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes. Obi-Wan nods slowly. 

“Death at the end of all things,” he murmurs. Just death. Isn’t that worse? “But I don’t know what it means.”

——————

He can’t reach Damask’s holocron without arousing suspicions, but the book is still there, so as soon as Qui-Gon is done with _explanations_ he slips away to affirm his suspicions. Damask has written much on the Dark Side and the function of the Force, and it isn’t difficult to find the right thing in the appendices. 

_When one speaks of death, one speaks of the end of things,_ the old muun had written, _and it an end we all seek to escape. Yet, despite our best efforts, it awaits us all; that is the single most true prophecy, and somehow one all my predecessors have sought and failed to escape. While most civilized creatures fear death, some have come to worship it in the usual manner small creatures worship great ones. I have sought to see the past and the future, so that I may better analyze it, but I have found this: that which came before us is dead, and that which comes after us will die. It strikes me that the Sith will rule only an empire of ashes, that too many alleged prophets have spoken of things that eat stars and spit destruction, like the weapons rumored to have belonged to the ancient rakata. We the Sith are not the first to walk this path, and perhaps we should consider what became of our predecessors, lest we too become cannibalistic shadows of our former selves._

_I have sought and sought for a way around this, but ironically enough my time may be too short to finish this work. Death need not be the end of all things. There must be a path to eternity that slips somewhere through the cracks in our doctrines. If I find it, I shall update this chapter for posterity. If I do not, I charge you, my student, with the pursuit of this knowledge, of the conquest of this fundamental aspect of the Force. True immortality is there, true eternity, just beyond our grasp. Build on my teachings, then, and grasp it, and leave the Path for those who follow._


	29. Chapter 29

(A rumor is going around the crèches and the classrooms of the younger denizens of the Jedi Temple. It’s told in pieces and mantras and worked into the sorts of games children wind up playing no matter what or where they are. It goes like this: the dead don’t stay dead, some wake to the Dark Side and hunt their former friends. One child takes the role of the revenant and chases blindfolded comrades through the halls, pins her victims and turns them to her own side by whispering in their ears _what color is the sky?_. This isn’t a game the living can win.

It goes like this: A dead girl stole Knight Vos and Knight Kenobi and carried them past the gates of Chaos, to a place where there aren’t stars and isn’t even the Force, and the people who went to save them walked into Chaos too. Who is the dead girl? Master Jinn’s sister, someone forgotten. How did they come back? The Sith apprentice, the one who feels like bleeding and has eyes all wrong but is always gentle to them, had cut through a wall and led Aayla out by the hand. How was it done? There is death and there is the Force, the Dark Side seeks to conquer both.

It goes like this: Master Jinn is ill because the Living Force is ill and he had reached out and touched it. Isn’t that what happened to the Revanchist? Of course not. That’s half a fairytale and anyway, the Revanchist was a hero. So now Master Jinn looks for the dead and the color of the sky, and Master Dooku looks for a cure.

It goes like this: Initiates play balance-games, perched wobbling atop posts in the training hall facing each other and running through rapid-fire call and responses. _What did I see? A falling star! What color was it? Blue blue blue! Where did it fall? It fell so far! Who follows it? Not me, not you!_

In quite a few civilizations, those who wanted to tell the future paid close heed to the games and whispers of children. The kel dor, for instance, had their own traditions of the Force for glimpsing what was to come, but listened to children’s games as well. For children repeat what they hear, stripped of all pretense and innuendo. An old story goes like this: a sage of the Baran Do sought to prevent the death of a local lord, but for all her powers did not know how the killers would strike. So she went down into the city and watched children playing on the streets. A pack of five circled a child on a chair, singing _twenty years we bow and bow,twenty years we bow, but come the feast of seven winds we’ll see who’s bowing now!_ and then leapt to pull the chair from under their companion. The sage then returned to the lord and told him what would happen: his five most loyal guards, who had served him for twenty years each, would put him to his knees with poison at the feast. Unwilling to believe her, he turned her out, and during the feast drank poisoned wine and died kneeling before his traitorous guards.

These stories, though, are from what the Republic would call primitive civilizations, from dark ages and times before people saw the sky as just another passageway. The kel dor have few sages now, because their Force sensitive children grow up masked and robed on Coruscant, and they have fewer lords and more lawyers and easy tests for poison in wine. It's all right. The kel dor cannot retreat from the galaxy once they have touched it, and few if any would really want to. Plo Koon and his kinfolk can take leave to study the old ways of the Baran Do, and if it's expected that in a few generations they will all be forgotten, well, time stops for none. Some call it progress, some call it death, just death. The point is, the Jedi hear these children's games and shake their heads and carry on, or worry if they are a sign of lingering trauma.)

––––––––

Qui-Gon knows he shouldn't dwell on Damask's writings. They are addressed to his student, after all—the mysterious Sidious, the enemy who may well be behind all of this. On the other hand, the old Sith Lord had clearly _wanted_ them delivered to Qui-Gon, had clearly grown disillusioned with his true student and... what? Sought a replacement, as Maul claims Sidious is doing? Gotten cold feet and sought to right some wrongs or prevent catastrophe? Whatever the goal, stopping Sidious's machinations had surely been part of it, and if Sidious was involved with Xanatos and Xanatos was working with the Bando Gora who answered to Vosa then surely trying to figure out what Vosa was going on about is a reasonable course of action, right? 

It makes sense in his head, but so had throwing Knight Unduli down a mine shaft. He would turn to the Force for guidance, but when he tries all he can feel is the constant hum of living beings and a wordless, pulling whisper. He thinks, and it makes sense, that if he meditates on that whisper he will be able to understand it, and through it understand the secrets of the Force that had in the end eluded Damask. The old Sith Lord had lacked intuition, and cold rationality could only take one so far. Qui-Gon _could_ — Could what? The whole affair with Vosa has left a gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach that doesn't go away, and that's intuition too.

(Fear leads to anger leads to the Dark, yes, but fear is also a perfectly sensible response to something frightening. It is correct, when you stand on the edge of an abyss, to be frightened of falling and act accordingly—which is to say, make sure you have a rope and harness or a working jetpack, or simply back away from the danger. That is what the Jedi try to teach: You stand at the edge of an abyss and look upon it and know it is dangerous, so you step back from it and make sure those with you do the same. Of course, that's the ideal reaction. Some just flee on their own, some see in the abyss an enemy, some see in it a hunger that needs sacrifices, and some trail their fingers through it like it's sea water.) 

There are many whose counsel Qui-Gon can seek, but turning to them feels like admitting failure. He can't do that, can't prove Windu and his fellow councilmembers _right_ and say that in embracing the Living Force he had wandered too far afield. He can't plead his case to Yoda, who surely has some answers from his long long life, because doing so would be an admission of failure— his own, and Dooku's too, and for all that Qui-Gon has clashed with his old master he is unwilling to betray him so. And Dooku, of course, cannot meet too often with the Jedi now that he has turned his back on the order, and for all that Obi-Wan is wise and sensible Qui-Gon cannot impose on his apprentice so soon after ... well, after whatever it is Vosa had done to her captives. 

"You look poorly, _Master_ Jinn," says the Sith apprentice, tattooed lips pulling into a smirk. Someone has brought him colorful bedding, likely from one of the crèches, and whoever put him in the cell last clearly had not bothered with the lock. The young zabrak sits cross-legged on bright red and white stripes and looks very nearly like a padawan in his quarters. (Nearly, almost. He'd nearly felt relief at the sight of his cell, he'd almost laughed when Aayla and a group of young apprentices had arrived with bedsheets and pillowcases robes in black like the mirialan knight had worn in gratitude for his help. Almost. The sentiment drifts around the edges of Maul's consciousness and he doesn't know what to do with it.) 

"Perhaps they banned me from hunting the Bando Gora for a reason," Qui-Gon replies, trying to keep his voice light. "Is there a price for asking you questions now?" The Sith apprentice pauses for a moment, then seems to understand. 

"These were a gift," he says. "You can pay me with something if my answers are useful." 

"Perhaps a plant? It would brighten the place up." This is familiar, silly banter, a call-and-response. Maul, though, doesn't know the response. ("Yet another?" Obi-Wan would say, has said. "One day you will find our quarters overrun entirely by plant life.")

"Do you have any that grow without sunlight?" Maul asks, instead. His cell is underground, and the air around him is cold, but there are plenty of things not meant for bright gardens. (It's been a while since he visited the gardens. He should do so again, come morning. Perhaps not to meditate, but just to appreciate the living things.) 

"I'll find one," Qui-Gon assures him. The Sith apprentice bares his teeth in something almost like a smile for a second before ducking his head and composing himself.   
"Then what do you want?"

"I want to know—" Qui-Gon pauses. What, exactly, does he want to know, now that he has been thoroughly distracted by the thought of plants and patterns? "I want to know about the Sith. Can you live forever? Can your master?"

"No." It's out of Maul's mouth almost before Qui-Gon is done speaking. He shifts around and puts his knees to his chest. "I don't— I was not taught such a thing. We can destroy, we can outlive our enemies, but if a Sith knew how to live forever there would be no need for an apprentice to carry on the work."

"Can you imagine how such a thing can be done?" Qui-Gon presses. The zabrak shakes his head. 

"Sorcery, I suppose. Old alchemy. But..." He pauses, frowns. "Even the Eternal Emperor didn't live forever, just a very long time. So it is not... _eternal_ , not if each Lord of the Sith can be slain by the next." Another pause. "The Jedi cannot live forever either."

"No, no," Qui-Gon concedes. "That is not the will of the Force. We must ultimately become one with it." (Is it fair, then, that Yoda will likely live another few centuries, while Qui-Gon hasn't got a whole one ahead of him? Is it fair that three Jedi died and others lived? Is that the will of the Force? He doesn't have answers for that.) Maul nods in understanding.

"The Jedi are eternal, individual Jedi are not. It is the same for— for the Sith." (Maul isn't stupid and he's quick to learn. Understanding a whole that is greater than the parts is simple enough. He has long known how to speak dispassionately, and it is easy too to speak that way of the Sith. Fear is their ally, but spoken of coldly and fearlessly Lord Sidious is just an old sorcerer, just one dangerous man in a very big galaxy, just one force-user among many.) 

"Are you?" Qui-Gon asks, because he doesn't dare ask _are we_. "Eternal?" The Sith apprentice shrugs.

"Of course. Unless the Dark Side itself were struck down." And that, Qui-Gon knows, can never really happen. The Dark Side, like any other facet of the Force, cannot be destroyed because the Force itself cannot be destroyed, not in any substantive way. (A cessation of the Force, Vos had said, and in the vision on Jedha Qui-Gon had seen the Jedi Temple painted red with blood. _The death of the Republic, the cessation of the Force, sometimes it’s just death and isn’t that worse?_ )

“And if it were?” he asks. Maul stares at him.

“The Force cannot be killed, Master Jedi,” he says after a long moment. “Those who can use the Force can be killed, but … there is not a heart of the Force, or a body of it. You said it exists in every living entity, and outside them. Even if one killed every living entity, the outside would still remain.” He pauses again and smooths the sleeves of his robes. “Is… that the correct answer, Master Jinn?” (He treats it like a test, because what else could it be? He’s an apprentice still, and for all else that Jinn is he is far more learned in the ways of the Force. Maul too has heard the testimony of the two knights, he too has mused on the idea of cessation, and he has reached his own conclusion. Through history, there have always been methods of destruction that had seemed absolute— weapons that devoured planets, stars, life itself. Through history, that had been used. Not once has _absolute_ destruction been achieved, not really, not even on Ruusan. Dead Sith Lords whisper through the ages to reach new students, orders rebuild, and new empires rise to replace old ones. The Dark Side is the truth of the Force, and the Force will never die.

There are, of course, limits to perception. He cannot truly fathom now the means of destruction that will be created and enacted before he grows old. He cannot really fathom the Force beyond what he has learned of it. Not yet. But the fundamentals of the assessment are correct. Even if it were possible to strike down every last Force-sensitive in the galaxy, it would not prevent more being born. The galaxy is vast, and there are places and peoples still not known to the Republic and places and peoples who are easily forgotten, and given time enough the same stories will play out as they have always played out. There will be a last Sith Lord, there will be a last Jedi, there was a last emperor of the rakata and one last True Sith watching the end come, there was once a last warrior of the Jed’aii. The Force continues on regardless.)

“Yes,” says Qui-Gon with a thin smile. “Yes, that is the correct answer.” He thinks of the _outside_ , the Living Force as it flows through time and space, and thinks the answer to Damask’s riddle may lie there. There are legends, after all, of ghosts within the Force, people whose minds and souls lingered on even after death. Shouldn’t there be a way for the living to grasp that? Damask had thought so, he’d just approached it from the wrong angle. All the better, really. This way, there’s a chance Qui-Gon can beat the mysterious Sidious to the prize. 

He thanks the Sith apprentice and takes his leave. There is work to be done, after all, ideally before Vosa or Xanatos strike again, before anything more can be lost. (Here, that foolish arrogance he shares with Dooku comes into play.) If he can figure this out _now_ , surely it will let him prevent those dark futures before they occur, before there are armies and star destroyers, before the wave of war breaks upon the Republic. And it makes ever so much sense, doesn’t it? All of it, Damask, the holocron, the prophecy, Anakin. If the war comes, it will mean cessation, destruction, if not of the Force then of so very much. If the prophecy comes true before the war, if Qui-Gon can walk that mysterious Path and grasp the fundamental knowledge of the Force, if Anakin can achieve his destiny and bring about _true balance_ , then….

Well, he isn’t sure what, exactly, but it will surely be a victory. Wouldn’t it?


	30. Chapter 30

(There isn’t an army yet, of course, the army is still being grown on Kamino, a hundred identical prototype infants in vats and millions more to follow. Still, there’s an enemy, one with a face and a name and an army of its own, so when the chancellor gives the order the Jedi go to war.

Of course they do. Palpatine steeples his fingers over his desk and looks at Windu with weary confusion. It’s only half false, he isn’t confused, but if he would bother to think of it he would find he is the sort of tired that eats through bone. He’s been that sort of tired for a long long time, because the Dark Side devours. It rarely devoirs quickly enough.

“Two rogue Jedi?” he asks. “Er—surely, Master Windu, the Temple keeps tabs on its own.”

“We try,” Windu replies, then suppresses the urge to bite his tongue. “No one can presume to be all-knowing, Chancellor.”

“The lives of Republic citizens hang in the balance, Master Windu,” Palpatine tells him. “As much as I understand your point, it strikes me that people don’t expect the Jedi to try. They expect you to succeed. I can only judge things based upon my own experiences, but the value of popular support...” He trails off, shakes his head. “I have faith that they will be brought to justice, of course. You know the Jedi have my utmost support.”

“Of course,” says Windu, who has dealt with several chancellors since his padawan days and found them all fundamentally useless. Palpatine is a colorless man in regalia that looks too big for him, and he hems and haws and implies things even worse than Valorum had. Windu dislikes him and distrusts him as he dislikes and distrusts nobles and politicians writ large. “Thank you, Chancellor. Your support is invaluable.”

And full support is given. The Jedi liaise with local militaries and law enforcement in the Core and Mid Rim and set to work. They aren't military commanders, they aren't meant to be, but if anyone asks this isn't military action. The Republic, after all, hasn't taken military action in a very long time. This is simply a manhunt on a particularly large scale, and those are often the purview of the Jedi. Truth be told, they do quite well. Without Vosa's presence and leadership, the Bando Gora are more frightening than they are deadly against lightsabers and blaster fire.   
Vosa sits back and lets her minions face death, because what is it to her? She sees death everywhere, the end of all things and the rise of the Sith, a galaxy plunged into chaos that drags on as far as her visions can show her. The Bando Gora can always be replaced, because there will always be fresh minds to break with truth and torture and once those run out? Well. Everything else will have run out by then too. 

So the Bando Gora fight and die and the heroism of the Jedi is broadcasted across the holonet. Chancellor Palpatine gives a slightly rushed interview after a cell of Bando Gora are routed on Naboo and praises the Jedi as the champions of the Republic. Windu stares blankly at a reporter and tells her the Jedi simply do their duty, which puts a damper on things for approximately five minutes until someone releases video of Kenobi and Vos rescuing a transport full of schoolchildren and the talk of heroism reignites with a vengeance. The people of the Core and the Mid Rim have long thought warmly of the Jedi, and now they have proof that the Jedi really fight for them.

Of course, that is not all of the Republic, and the Republic is not all of the galaxy. Far beyond where the Bando Gora sow their havoc, things are not more peaceful. They rarely are. There are pirates and marauders and gangs preying on the weak, there are corporate interests and criminal syndicates and corrupt politicians bleeding planets dry, and there are no champions of the Republic to come and save them. 

"Of course there aren't," says a man with a broken-circle scar on his face. He is, theoretically, talking trade and investments with a handful of regional leaders who have grown leery of the Trade Federation and the IGBC. " _The Republic has never cared about you._ Or any of us.”

It doesn't take much of a push at all for them to agree, and once they start to there seems to be no end to their grievances. They have been abandoned, they and their people, and while the Jedi chase down any danger to allegedly more civilized worlds and the Senate makes speeches about security and prosperity. Dooku, one suggests, Dooku had often tried to draw attention to the plight of the outer worlds, and as senator now he can do more. The others disagree, bitter and tired, and say Dooku seeks only to benefit his homeworld and his own political career and leave all the rest of the galaxy to rot, as Jedi do. 

"I don't know what I'd do," says the man with the broken-circle scar. "I'm wealthy enough, you see, and I'm human, and no one relies on me but me. If I were in your shoes, I don't know what I'd do." He laughs hollowly. " _Kill them_ , I suppose. If I got close enough to try."

“Kill them, ha,” echoes one of his companions. “Could take a blaster to that chancellor, I suppose, but how’s a person to kill a Jedi?” Another hums agreement.

“You’d need something a sight bigger than a blaster for that.”

Somewhere else, in a filthy cantina, a woman with a shock of white hair is holding court with a group of bounty hunters. They doubt her words, which is an odd change from the usual mindless obedience she enjoys, but these need to be able to do damage according to their own whims. 

“A weapon will be delivered. That is not what you need to worry about,” she says. Her eyes look big and unfocussed in the poor lighting. 

“By who?” asks one of the bounty hunters, dubious. The woman shrugs. 

“It doesn’t matter, does it? It will devour planets all the same. It already has. These things go in cycles of inevitability.” She pauses. “There will be a war, there will be an empire, and there will be a weapon. And there will be death.”

“You a prophet, or something?” another hunters asks. The woman giggles.

“If I were, would that change anything?” And no, it wouldn’t, because her money would be worth the same. “Good. Now, _do as I tell you_.”)

––––––––––––

Qui-Gon isn’t allowed to join the fighting. It is a battle, he is informed, that he has too much of a personal stake in. He isn’t allowed to see Dooku, either, and now the man has armed bodyguards shadowing his every step. Stupid, really. If Vosa had wanted her old master dead, Qui-Gon thinks, she would have already struck. No, Dooku is of more use, somehow, alive. Being able to talk to him would be useful, but Qui-Gon has been informally imprisoned on the Temple grounds. That’s fine, he can live with that. 

He takes to spending his days buried in research, cross-checking notes copied hastily from Damask’s writings with other records and histories. In the Archives, he too often feels judgmental eyes upon him, even when the room he’s in is empty. Instead, he ends up hiding in the private room in the Halls of Healing where Master Sifo-Dyas sleeps like the dead. Sometimes he gets the feeling the old seer is watching him too, but Sifo-Dyas had understood things, hadn’t he? He’d seen the future. He’d seen the truth.

(He, like Qui-Gon, had rather seen what Plagueis had wanted them to see. Oh, they both had glimpsed the future, yes, or some possible variations thereupon, and Vosa was quite right to speak of the inevitability of things, but not everything that is certain is certain in quite the same way. The Republic is a sprawling and diseased thing, and it has existed a very long time. It is not an empire, but that is a technicality and an ancient rule of empires still applies: that which is long united must divide. 

It is rarely a pleasant division, and yes, it is the death of the Republic that looms in the near future, carried by the rising tides of the Dark Side. Yes, into the resultant chaos shall come those who seek to destroy the Force itself and make themselves the first and the last, and remake the galaxy itself in their own image. Yes, into that shall come war machines like none in living memory— but like plenty in memories gone by, weapons that can snuff out planets, star systems, entire ways of being. 

An empire long united must divide, but the ancient sages looked upon history and added a second part: and that which is long divided must unite. There have been wars before and there will be wars again, and there will be costs that are terrible, and someday, always, there comes a moment when the war ends and weary survivors cast their gaze to the future. There is death, it is idealistic folly to deny that, but there is the Force, and it is folly to deny that too. The death of the Republic comes, a cessation within the Force looms, but what comes after? Neither Sifo-Dyas nor Qui-Gon nor poor lost Vosa have thought that far. The funny thing is, at the end of his life, Plagueis did. He had looked at a vision of an empire of ashes and saw, to his surprise, new growth like seeds sprouting after a fire, waking to emptiness and filling it with life. Such a thing isn’t quite enough to give a Sith Lord cold feet, but he has a very long time to dwell on its ramifications, trapped as he is an eternal silent watcher of what he has wrought.)

Qui-Gon is there, then, reading and comparing ancient and frankly rather incoherent tales of those who could allegedly exist past death — here there are tales of ghostly Jedi advising their successors as much as there are tales of Sith Lords lingering on for centuries to poison the minds of the unwary — when Sifo-Dyas wakes. It’s a jolt, from the comfortable silence to the sudden tumult of fear, confusion, and worry, and Qui-Gon turns in time to see the old man recoil in fear and press his back to the wall. 

“You’re quite safe, Master,” he assures him, but Sifo-Dyas stares at him without recognition. “Do you want me to call a healer?” 

“You shouldn’t be here,” the old seer says instead of answering. “Why are you here?”

“Master Dooku wanted you taken care of.” It’s a complete evasion of the truth, but not a lie. Sifo-Dyas’s frightened gaze flickers left and right. 

“Yan…?”

“He’s not here. He went to hunt down a Sith Lord.” And that sounds terribly stupid out loud. Dooku— alone against this unknown threat! Even if he finds Sidious, then what? Sifo-Dyas doesn’t seem comforted by this either. 

“It’ll kill him,” Sifo-Dyas whispers. “Kill him and take him, and then it will do the same to you all.”

“What will?” Qui-Gon asks, even though he probably should say something comforting. Sifo-Dyas shakes his head. 

“It’s too late,” he says. “We already failed.”

“No, no,” Qui-Gon assures him. “We haven’t. Whatever’s coming, I can stop it, it can be fixed. It’s a matter of the fundamental truth of the Force–“

And then in a span of around ten seconds Sifo-Dyas hits him across the face quite hard and a healer walks in to see what’s going on and orders Qui-Gon and his research escorted out for the patient’s well-being. Dooku gets summoned back to the Temple over this, though, which is something. Qui-Gon has quite a bit he wants to check in with his old master about.


	31. Chapter 31

(Dooku looks weary when he arrives, but there’s a manic energy to him as he brushes past greetings and hurries (doesn’t run, he never runs, but he hurries) to the Halls of Healing. He doesn’t embrace Sifo-Dyas, they are old masters and the Jedi teach to overcome attachment, but in the doorway his shoulders go slack with visible relief and Sifo-Dyas smiles for the first time in what feels like an eternity.

What they mean, you see, is that no one person is worth more than any other, and certainly no one person is worth a harm done onto the galaxy. You can love, old Master Coven meant, but love wisely, for all things fade like flowers after springtime and like the smell of rain. You will outlive those you love, or they will outlive you, but someday you will all be one with the Force, so grief and loss will fade as well and in the end we will be whole again. That is not what was written, though, so the lesson passed on is that the Jedi must overcome attachment. To some, it is simple: love and let go, like the parents who sent you away to the Temple to be all you can be, like the crèchemaster who raised you from a babe and dried your tears and kissed your bruises and then called you padawan and bid you move along for now, like the master who trained you and protected you and shared so much of your mind and cut the braid from your head and last and whispered words of pride, like the friends who pass happy hours then go off on missions where they could well die. For others, it is impossible: how do you cease to love, how do you look upon your crèchemates, your masters, your students, your friends, and not see in them all the value that isn’t in the stars? So you see, it is the in the discrepancy between the text and the meaning where we are lost. Dooku is among those lost, of course. He loves fiercely, in ways he has never learned the words for and words he can never teach, and he has been taught that no one person is worth more than the galaxy, but he thinks there are a rare few people who make the galaxy worth anything at all. Without them, then, what worth is left?

The Sith have an answer, twisted mirrors of their counterparts that they are. To join their ranks, you must be willing to strike down those most precious to you. Once you do, once you are fully cut adrift from who you were and whom you loved, when there is no value left in the galaxy outside yourself, you sacrifice your name as well and exist only as a servant of the Dark Side. Here there is no attachment, no one person is worth more than any other because no person is left who is worth anything.

“You woke,” Dooku says bluntly. He is well-spoken when he is calm and eloquent when he is angry. Relief numbs his tongue.

“You ... left,” Sifo-Dyas answers. It isn’t an accusation. He knows the will of the Force is often mysterious, but it still feels like a betrayal. There is no emotion, there is peace, and for all talk of departures Yan Dooku stands at his bedside like he has a thousand times before, so it’s alright, isn’t it?

“The Sith,” Dooku tells him with a vague wave of his hand. “This war has summoned them as much as they have summoned it.”

“The war has always been here,” says Sifo-Dyas. So have the Sith, haven’t they? He’s waiting for Dooku to disagree, to offer up that certainty that has been the foundation of their friendship since they were children. Certainty is its own power, for good or for ill. But Dooku has watched a woman he trained sow havoc through a third of the galaxy and heard and felt the discontent in the Outer Rim that grows from a low murmur to a roar, and he has heard the pleas of far too many— _Can’t you stop this, Master Jedi? Can’t you make it stop, can’t you make it better, can’t you do something with the power you hold? Isn’t that why you went off on your own, didn’t you want to fix things?_ Dooku bows his head and sighs.

“Yes, perhaps you are right. Perhaps it has.”)

Qui-Gon corners his old master a short while later. (And don’t they look a pair! They cast long shadows now, too long for the honey-gold sunlight of the Temple.) A pack of initiates run blindfolded down the hall, laughing and scattering, while a cerean girl stalks bounds after them, her gaze fixed on one target out of the throng. They turn a corner and pass out of Qui-Gon’s view before she manages to catch up. Dooku frowns.

“A new game?” he asks. Qui-Gon shrugs. He hasn’t been paying much heed to the initiates, of late. Much too busy. 

“Aren’t there always?” he replies. “I need to speak with you.”

“Someone always does,” Dooku says dryly. “I thought Komari dead. We all did. I have nothing more to say on the matter.” (And if he hadn’t looked too closely, if he’d been a bit too quick to close that chapter in his life and write poor Komari off with, if not a hero’s death, then at least an idealist’s one, who can blame him? That would have been a cleaner break than any where she could be just around a corner, a glaring reminder of his own failure as a teacher. Oh, but Dooku does blame himself, now more than ever. This, he thinks, is where the easy path leads, and it’s a path he doesn’t dare walk again.)

“This isn’t about her,” Qui-Gon assures him. “It’s about the Force—the Sith, all of it.” Dooku looks unimpressed. 

“People are dead, Qui-Gon, and more shall die before this is over, even if it ends the way we wish it to.” (From without, the Senate had seemed like an impenetrable mass of corruption and red tape. From within it is worse, somehow, because the corrupt ones make bargains while those who want to do good, truly do good, fight one another over minute details and all the while people suffer and die and the Outer Rim pulls away and so many closer planets edge away with it.)

“There is no death,” Qui-Gon insists. “There is only the Force. There have been Force users— _Jedi_ who have continued on past death, what’s coming doesn’t have to be a _cessation_ —“ He cuts himself off. The word had slipped out quite unintentionally, he hadn’t meant it. He’d meant _what’s coming doesn’t have to be the end_. Dooku’s eyes narrow. It’s a look Qui-Gon knows well, though one usually directed at uncooperative civilians. 

“A _cessation_?” the old man echoes. Qui-Gob frowns. 

“It’s nothing—“

“Yes, that is rather was cession implies,” Dooku snaps. The air around him _crackles_ with electricity, and Qui-Gon takes an abrupt step back. The extra space between them feels much larger than it should, and he can see Dooku’s fists clenched and jaw tightened, lightning-scars dead white against sickly sallow skin. 

“What have you been doing, _Master_?” he asks, and it comes out cold and accusatory though he isn’t sure that’s how he means it. In some part he is concerned— Dooku’s pursuit of Sidious seems to have done more harm to him than to the mysterious Sith Lord, after all, and Qui-Gon doesn’t want his old master dead or harmed or lost in the Dark like Xanatos and Vosa. Another part of him is seething quietly. How dare the Council look upon _Qui-Gon_ with doubt while Dooku parades around the Senate like Sith lightning made flesh? How dare _Dooku_ have his freedom while Qui-Gon himself is practically shackled? It isn’t right, it isn’t fair. Dooku draws himself up to his full height and fixes Qui-Gon with an equally cold stare.

“I could ask you much the same of you, _Padawan_. The Jedi do not delve into the Dark, we destroy it.” (He had been a Shadow, once, after all, and that is the Shadows’ creed. It is also the Shadows’ folly, for it is a rare one among them who doesn’t delve into that which should be destroyed eventually. That’s when, generally, they get reassigned somewhere safer.)

“You turned your back on the Jedi,” Qui-Gon says without thinking even a little. “You have no right to abandon us and then speak for us.” And he feels rather than sees Dooku flinch as if he has been hit. 

(Worse than if he has been hit. Dooku prides himself on being able to hide physical pain, among other things. He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t groan, he doesn’t stagger until he is well clear of any enemy. It’s another thing entirely to have your former apprentice dig into an already festering wound. He _has_ abandoned them, hasn’t he? Qui-Gon and Sifo-Dyas just as much as Komari, left to fall in the Dark while Dooku turns his back. And for what? Of course, this isn’t the whole truth, just the part of it that causes the most harm. It isn’t Dooku’s duty, really, to save Qui-Gon from himself, nor is it his duty more than any other Jedi’s to fend off dark visions plaguing his fellows. Both Qui-Gon and Sifo-Dyas are masters in their own rights, trained and respected and capable enough of making their own choices. He had owed Komari more. She’d only been a student.) 

For a long moment they are both silent, then Dooku’s carefully blank expression shifts into a polite, icy smile. (It will be a famous expression, soon enough.)

“Of course,” he says. “I can only speak for those who have elected me and for myself. Quite true, thank you for reminding me.” (For Serenno at the edge of the galaxy, for its citizens old and new, and for the army it commands. That is no small thing to speak for, and if the Jedi and Coruscant won’t come for their outermost allies, Serenno will.) 

“My pleasure,” says Qui-Gon, because he can’t take the words back now, so he may as well. “Do try to avoid starting a war.” 

“The war, _Master Jedi_ , is has always been here,” Dooku intones like it’s a mantra, and then he turns on his heel and stalks away. (There is still someone he can protect here, though, and in two days time all the appropriate flimsiwork is filed to spirit Sifo-Dyas off to a quiet estate on Serenno, far away from Sith Lords and wars and the Bando Gora. Before then, even, Serenni ships take up positions along trade routes and smugglers’ ways, because that is no grand authority in the Outer Rim that they could be usurping. 

“This in an unauthorized military action that undermines the authority of the Republic,” says Palpatine. “I would advise you to stop, though that had little impact the last time as well.” Dooku favors him with that same cold smile.

“And just like last time, Serenno was protecting its interests. If the Republic wishes to move to aid members from the Outer Rim, my people would gladly step down and give over control. However, given the current situation, I quite understand if you simply lack the funds and manpower.” 

“The Republic is already in debt, in no small part thanks to my direct predecessor,” Palpatine admits. “I shudder to think what would happen if we were further beholden to the IGBC than we already are. But I cannot condone what is being done. As your chancellor, I bid you to stop.”

“And as a senator l shall pass the instruction along to the local leadership. They, as you well know, are to required to take orders from either of us.” And he meets Palpatine’s gaze and holds it until the Chancellor hastily goes to shuffle some datapads.

They both think they have won this battle. Serenno, Sidious knows, is a powerhouse in its sector. Any indication that it has turned on the Republic is fuel for the fires of revolt. Dooku has, to match Palpatine’s official condemnation of the action, a list of 54 signatures of senators endorsing it, and plans to deliver both at the same time. 54 is too few, he thinks, but it may well be enough to dampen talk of secession for now, if it's brought by the mastermind of the Triellus Raid.)


	32. Chapter 32

There isn’t a clean break, a time when the Bando Gora attacks stop and the next problem begins. Half the Temple is still out on that assignment when a whole quadrant of the Outer Rim rises in rebellion. The fleet from Serenno goes to meet it in combat, two different senatorial factions claim that that constitutes an act of war against the Republic, and one of Dooku’s more ardent supporters is caught on holovid saying Palpatine and Organa have their thumbs wedged up some inappropriate bits of their anatomy. The holonet goes wild, of course. Even without that, the whole affair feels wrong. It’s a setup, some complicated game to tear the Republic apart along quite different lines. Dooku refuses to take any calls, so Qui-Gon gets hung up on fourteen times before he gets through to Padmé. 

“No one is permitted to comment, thank you,” Padmé says. She sounds like she has a script and doesn’t like it.

“This is Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“Oh. Senator Dooku isn’t here either. Do you not have duties to attend to yourself, Master Jedi?” She still speaks like a queen, rather than like a young girl. It had been funny on Tatooine, but now Qui-Gon just finds it mildly annoying. 

“Our _duty_ is to protect the citizen of the Republic. We can hardly do that while senators accuse one another of sedition, and I cannot intercede in senatorial matters without being asked to.” Padmé is silent for a moment, but the _sentiment_ of huffing in annoyance is there. 

“Very well. I will inform Chancellor Palpatine.” Another pause, and then she orders him to stay on the line, then proceeds to rapidly excuse herself into Palpatine’s office and interrupt a meeting. 

“My dear girl,” says Palpatine’s voice. “Surely there is nothing so pressing as the current circumstances.”

“A Jedi is asking about the current circumstances,” says Padmé firmly. “Perhaps it would be preferable for him to be party to this conversation.” There is an unpleasant clunk as Padmé puts her earpieces on a table. 

“Well, I suppose it would come to that eventually,” says Palpatine, and continues with the explanation. Dooku, apparently, has run off back to his homeworld, either to oversee military operations or to put a stop to them. Serenno claims to be acting in the best interests of the Republic in putting down the revolt, the leader of the revolt claims to be acting on behalf of those abandoned by the Republic in the hour of need and makes some complicated reference to Kalee—

“Kalee?” Padmé asks. Palpatine hums. (He will send her back to Naboo not long after this, on the pretext of safety. She is bright, yes, but too pushy, too prone to sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.)

“The Republic intervened in a regional conflict in the area, perhaps you’d recall— the Yam’rii crisis. Kalee suffered… losses in war, and the locals have continued to blame us. Neither the Republic nor the Jedi would be a welcome sight on Kalee, or before these rebels, if they take up a similar banner.” (They don’t teach of the Republic’s failures, not in schools for noble girls on Naboo. They don’t teach about the wrong interventions, just as the Jedi don’t teach that it’s perfectly possible to do wicked, wicked things in the name of the light and not fall into the Dark Side to any real extent. Kalee was a intelligence failure and the reaction to it would perpetuate others. Padmé is a bright girl, though, and she will seek and she will learn and she will weep in the dark for a planet burned and a woman sunken into the sea, and it will mean nothing to anyone.) 

“I doubt they are rebelling for love of the Republic,” Qui-Gon points out dryly. “And if you do not wish for Serenno to intercede…”

“But the Jedi have their hands full!” another voice intercedes. That chagrian vice-chancellor, Qui-Gon guesses. 

“I myself am presently on Coruscant—as are many others, if you think my judgement may be impaired by my relationship to Senator Dooku.”

“His old teacher,” a woman clarifies. 

“Ah, quite,” says the chagrian vice-chancellor. 

“Of course, one would never levi such an accusation against a Jedi,” says Palpatine smoothly. “I am certain of your impartiality, Master Jinn.as certain as I am of your diplomatic bona-fides.”

“If that is the case, it will be my pleasure to serve,” Qui-Gon says. “Do just pass the order along.”

Windu isn’t there to glare when the order comes in, but Master Mundi does a good job on his behalf. The Jedi serve at the will of the Republic and its leaders, however, so Qui-Gon gives the roughly-a-third of the Council present his most exaggerated formal bow, takes his orders, and sets off. 

———————

(“There is no peace, there is only passion.” 

A gaggle of young apprentices, led by Aayla, sits outside Maul’s cell. As far as they’re concerned, it’s his room, their masters are finishing raids on Bando Gora compounds or giving debriefings, and as Jedi the apprentices are trained to listen without internalizing. So they sit and listen, cross-legged on pillows, and Maul sits mimicking their posture and talks. There is no peace, there is only passion, but he isn’t sure there’s passion. There is fear, there is anger, there is hunger for all sorts of things, but these are reactions, not fundamental truths. So what is true? There is no peace, he knows that, and the apprentices watching him will soon learn it. There is no peace, there is… 

“Through passion I gain strength.”

But it hadn’t been passion that had let Master Jinn capture Maul to begin with, had it? And it hadn’t been passion that had driven the woman in the mines to the strength to kill Jedi, and it certainly isn’t passion that drives Lord Sidious or the makashi-juur Dooku. And surely there is strength to Master Nu, calm as still water, or to any of a hundred others. There is no peace and some have strength and passion is well aside from that, and war is coming, will come, has come. Death, just death, the woman in the mines had said, and Kenobi had called it cessation. There is no peace, there is only death— no, that isn’t something Maul can accept. There is no peace, no, but there is the fight, there are goals, there are desires, there are people willing to face fear and death and whatever else for one another. 

“Through strength I gain power.”

The Jedi are strong, but they have no power, not like this. They are tools of greater things, things that have power but no strength, things that steal and lie. It is easy to hate Sidious, Maul thinks he must have hated his master at some point in a foggy before. It’s easy to hate the senators, perched high above the rest of the galaxy and unwilling to look beyond their gilded halls. The makashi-juur, Maul has understood, had wanted to force change, but his actions had been and still are too little too late in the face of… what, exactly? This is information Maul should know, should have been told, but all he has a puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. An army and a war and Master Jinn’s old apprentice and the woman in the mine who had been taught by the makashi-juur and the Senate and Lord Sidious and the dead Hego Damask. No, it is not through strength that power is won here, that is a simple fact borne out by the data. It is hardly true, even, that power is won—it is stolen, more often than not.

“Through power, I gain victory.”

That one is true enough, Maul thinks, battles are won before they have begun, and they are won by measures of power. 

“Is victory the end?” Aayla asks. The question is posed in good faith. She wants to understand the strange man who had helped her save her master, or at least understand why he had helped her. To prove himself? Out of a hunger for battle? Out of whatever sense of kinship or mercy makes him speak softly to the littler initiates? Out of boredom? The Sith are incomprehensible to her, and she’s leery of guessing at people’s thoughts. Maul blinks at her. 

“No,” he says, because there is more to the mantra. But isn’t it the end? After the Sith triumph, after their hard-won revenge, after the destruction of the Republic and the Jedi, what then? Is there freedom then? Or does another apprentice slay another master and start the whole thing over again? Or is there the cessation, the silence at the end of all things that makes Kenobi, who seems fearless, go pale and silent? He corrects himself. “Perhaps so. I… I have not completed my training.” The words don’t come easily, but the little padawans nod in understanding. 

“That’s okay,” Aayla says. “I was just curious.” The sincerity is still jarring, but the consistency with which it has been applied makes it not unexpected. It is still easier to admit such weakness to those who have no power over him. “Are you curious too?”

“Yes,” Maul says. “It is important to— to know one’s enemies.” Enemies? Yes. Enemies. “Your enemies are many, after all. Your masters are learning this. So will— so should you.”

“The Jedi are many too,” says Aayla. She isn’t scared of him. Maybe she should be, but she isn’t, because he held her hand and stopper her falling over like a senior student or a young knight would, and that’s the end of being scared of him. Master Quinlan says people show who they really are when the lights are out, after all. 

“Not many enough,” Maul says. He has read of old temples like this one, long abandoned with the centralization of all things upon Coruscant. He has read of fortress-stations at the edges of Wild Space long since given over to shadow and silence. He has counted data points and read a misfiled treatise on why, perhaps, there were fewer Force-sensitive children being born now than there were a hundred years ago. It may be the culmination of the schemes of the Sith over generations, or it may be the will of the Force. The apprentices look up at him in silence, waiting for an answer. There is no peace, and there is no passion, and victory is stolen, and the Force frees no one. There are goals, there is strength, and freedom comes to those who steal their victories and break their chains. “Thus you must to know what you are fighting. What your enemy wants, what it is capable of doing, how it can be destroyed.”

“You don’t think it’s gonna stop, do you?” The speaker is a little bothan, so leery of Maul that her fur stands on end. Her voice quavers when she speaks. “With—with the dead people?”

“I know this is just the beginning.” Altogether less than useful, he thinks, if one doesn’t know the end.)

———————

Qui-Gon travels alone, as requested by the chancellor. All for the best, he hardly needs someone looking over his shoulder and questioning his every move. Hyperspace is quiet and far removed from everything. Here, perhaps, it would be easier to understand the Force in its true form, untethered by life or death. He shuts his eyes and reaches out — there is no wind in hyperspace, nothing blows between planets and stars, but the Force as one hurtles through untold distance in less than a heartbeat feels something akin to it. (It’s like standing on the highest peak of the highest mountain, gazing down at all the world when it looks like so many grains of sand, and feeling wind that isn’t meant for breathing brush past you. Not quite the same, of course. Nothing is quite the same.) There is time, time seems infinite, so he turns off his comm and meditates. All is as the Force wills it, after all. 

It isn’t that he doesn’t feel the missile shot at his ship as it drops from hyperspace. He does. It’s just ever so difficult to put the pieces together and realize that it’s been shot at him and going to hit and if he’s hit he’ll be hurt. What drifts through his mind, stupidly enough, is that someone ought to watch out for that. By the time it hits, and emergency alerts drags Qui-Gon back to more mundane reality, it’s far too late. The pilot droid is incapacitated and the ship is rocking unsteadily, most of its power cut. Stumbling to his feet, Qui-Gon swears and runs to the cockpit, but it’s beyond saving and the ship is already spilling down, caught in the gravitational pull of the harsh, desert planet below.


	33. Chapter 33

He dreams he’s falling through smoke. It rises around him, or perhaps it is still and only he is in motion. Either way, it doesn’t brush his skin or fill his lungs no matter how much of it he passes through, it doesn’t even have a smell. There is nothing here, nothing to even grab onto or orient himself by, just the nonexistence of smoke. 

“Oh, but it does exist,” says a voice somewhere indeterminately behind and below him. “You know it does.” He does know it does. It’s just beyond the edge of his consciousness, but it’s there. “As many things are,” says the voice. “All you need to do is look from the right angle.”

He dreams he’s sitting under carved cyber flowers. Someone is in the room with him, someone whom he doesn’t know. Does he? He can’t turn around and check, he’s supposed to be meditating. The Force is omnipresent here— isn’t it?

“Master Jinn!” He dreams he’s teaching a class of padawans. Obi-Wan is there, no older than fourteen, listening with rapt attention and wearing immaculate white. Anakin sits beside him a black cloak slung about his shoulders. Maul, half his height and with a padawan braid dangling off one of his horns, is standing and clutching a red holocron with both hands, while a girl Qui-Gon can’t recognize steps toward him. 

“Master Jinn,” she says. That’s an odd accent, not one he can place. “It’s very, very important that you look.”

“What am I looking for?” he asks, and the girl shakes her head. 

“It’s very, very important that you look.”

“You’re supposed to know the answer,” says Anakin, accusatory. “Aren’t you a master?”

He dreams of a gate to nowhere and everywhere. He dreams of the things that live within the Force. He dreams of things that can devour stars and make them, and of those who would tap that power to their own ends, and in his dream he walks among them. It’s easy to dream all sorts of things, of course, especially for those in tune with the Force.

Qui-Gon wakes to emptiness. He has fallen into a desert and landed a bit wide of the wreckage of his ship. Around him, the sand dunes stretch flat and identical in all directions as far as the eye can see. Is he dreaming again? No, this time reality rushes back. The chancellor’s orders, the mission, the rebellion… Ah. Yes, this is none-too-useful turn of events. Even a cursory examination of the wreckage indicates there is nothing left that can be flown. No communicator either, and his supplies are burnt to a crisp. At least Qui-Gon himself is undamaged, as is his lightsaber, though he’s rapidly beginning to question _why_. 

(Coincidences and the will of the Force are one thing, but traps are quite another. He’s walked — or, er, flown, technically — right into this one in his bid to escape the Temple.) 

Still, Jedi are to keep cool heads in such situations, so Qui-Gon tamps down on fear (a foolish instinct) and curiosity (better sated when he’s not in a desert, perhaps) and breathes deeply of the dry, hot air. Unlike Tatooine’s, this air is still and free of dust, and the sand beneath Qui-Gon’s boots is as still as a meditation garden. Such stillness is rarely natural, for even beneath the silent surface of a lake life ought naturally to teem. In a meditation garden the stillness is created and enforced, and in a dead lake… well, someone has always made it so. _Cessation_ , he thinks. _Death, just death._

When he reaches out with the Force, there is stillness there too, though not quite so much of it. There is nothing living in this sand or on it (again absurd— all places grow life, and there are even things that thrive in the void of space) but beneath, oh beneath the false dunes something glows like a beacon in the Force. This is, Qui-Gon knows, certainly a trap, but there’s nothing else for him to do but spring it. Eyes shut (doesn’t matter if he can see or not, there’s nothing _to_ see), he faces the direction of the beacon and walks. 

And walks. And walks some more. Time and distance have little meaning in a place like this, but they do still have impact in that it’s rather annoying to keep _walking_. It’s the sort of thing that is used to teach padawans humility—walk until you realize how unimportant you, how small you are, how brief your life is when compared to a planet or to the galaxy itself. Qui-Gon had always disliked such lessons. What were the Jedi if not important, after all? Not the size or age of planets, true, but they were always important and always had been, they’d been a constant of the Republic since before its founding and really, if one thought about it, that made them grand and ancient _enough_. (The missed function of the lesson is this: the galaxy, these planets, the Republic, all these things are made up of living people. No one person is a grand and ancient thing alone—just a small and unimportant part of it. So it is with the Jedi too; the arrogant padawan sulking in the meditation garden is part of a grand and ancient tradition, yes, just as much as one grain of the sand beneath his feet is part of something greater too.) 

Eventually, what feels like an aggravating eternity later (but would be identifiable as a bit longer than a standard hour, if he had a functioning timer), he comes to a halt atop the beacon he has been following. There is no visible change in his surroundings, but the visible is clearly not important. When he thrusts his hand into the sand before him, it sinks deep as if it has been thrust into a viscous liquid instead. Odd. After a moment’s internal debate, he takes the dive. 

(There are many places that are strong in the Force. Many function rather like wellsprings, in the general sense that this is where the Force surfaces and can easily be tapped into and used to fuel growth and life. Over the millennia, these places have become temples and strongholds and palaces and schools, the cores of many vital things and over the millennia many of these vital things have turned to dust. Such is the case here—both this forsaken planet and its wellspring have been many things to many groups of beings. Most recently, it had been claimed by the Sith and razed in the great wars, not by the Jedi but by a Sith faction that had deemed its owners to be a splinter sect. The line of Bane had dug it back up, of course, but found little of interest that could not also be found in other sites. That is a Sith Lord’s folly, because each such site is different. All you need to do is look from the right angle.)

Qui-Gon drops to the polished stone floor in an ungainly heap, which is entirely to be expected when one dives through the ceiling of a thing. Around him rise high, ornate walls of a temple in a style he doesn’t quite recognize, damaged and scored from battle. Death lingers here, not a smell like the Bando Gora’s but the memory of it, cold and complete. Here there once were living things, and then they were killed and there is nothing more to the story. What once was will never be again. Qui-Gon shudders. This isn’t the sort of knowledge he seeks. This isn’t the sort of knowledge he wants to think of. The finality of it is a relic from a more barbarous time, he wants to believe, but instead he looks around and sees echoes of those visions of war. This is a warning, then, of what may come if he doesn’t act.

Cautiously, he picks his way through the ruin, past broken doors and empty archives and places where apprentices once trained. (The line of Bane lives in isolation, but that wasn’t always so. Long ago, lifetimes away, the Sith had schools and gaggles of apprentices as well, and all the petty bits of living that come with that. To the Dark Side and its followers, that was unforgivable weakness, and the schools were destroyed and the apprentices were slaughtered long before any final battles.) Only the bones of this place seem to remain, picked clean and polished. But something, _something_ has drawn him in. Where he expects a central courtyard to be there is instead a room with a raised altar, the altar and walls inscribed with text in an unfamiliar language. A crimson holocron sits atop the altar, active and humming, and when he approaches a robed figure manifests. It’s damaged. The image crackles and shifts, then addresses him in a low, distorted voice. 

“Do you come—“ Distortion. “—ing knowledge? I do not know—“ Again. “—students, but seekers are welcome. Always.”

“I am a seeker,” Qui-Gon says. “Who are you?” The holocron image crackles. 

“—Archivist. We seek power, this is a form of power.” It pauses. “—another? I recall—“ More distortion. “—acolyte came this way, spoke to me. Are you another?” Qui-Gon’s blood goes cold. He had not felt the presence of another here, but all the same…

“An acolyte came through here? Recently?” he presses. The image nods and says something garbled about the Sith and gates of knowledge. “A man or a woman?” It seems to have trouble with the concept, so they go around in circles for a little while before the image perks up. 

“—very quiet here, since the last ones came. But now there’s two of you.” And it gestures over Qui-Gon’s shoulder. He’s never whirled about faster, even though he knows what he’s going to see. 

“The old bastard hasn’t got anything useful to say, I’ve checked,” says Xanatos dryly. He’s standing in a doorway, one of three entrances into the chamber that appear functional, and he holds his saber loosely in his hand. Behind Qui-Gon, the archivist’s holocron splutters in obvious offense. _It is very important that you look,_ the girl in the dream had said, so Qui-Gon looks. The doorway behind Xanatos is blocked off, it only looks functional. He couldn’t have entered through it, that’s just an illusion. 

“This is your doing, then?” Qui-Gob asks, just as casually. Xanatos shrugs.

“Perhaps it’s the will of the Force, _Master_. The Republic will die, as all things must, and the Sith will rise again. And you—you will be buried.”

“When the sky falls?” Xanatos laughs at that. 

“Oh, no. You’re dreaming much too far ahead. Everyone’s getting quite tired of your behavior—or, well, everyone who matters. The Sith don’t take kindly to usurpers, you know.”

“—usurpation after usurpation,” says the holocoron image. “They were destroyed from within, a poison.” 

“A usurper? Is that how you see me?” Qui-Gon asks. 

“I see you as an old fool,” Xanatos snaps. “But that decision isn’t mine. You have stolen and you seek to usurp, and for that the Sith will see you dead. This seems a fitting burial chamber, the sort of thing you’ve been sticking your nose into of late. Curiosity _kills_ , you know.”

“Don’t you want to do that yourself?” Xanatos hesitates at the suggestion. 

“Of course,” he says after a moment. “But there are things I want more, things I can have.”

“Things Sidious can give you?”

“Things I can learn and take from him,” Xanatos corrects. “The powers of the Dark Side can conquer all things, even death.”

“—usurper of the Path,” says the holocron image. Xanatos turns away for a moment and gestures, and the sand above them begins to trickle down. 

“I’d love to give you a rundown of my plans, but it would be quite pointless,” Xanatos says. “You’re going to die here, and I have a revolution to run. It’s been a pleasure, Master, but you won’t be missed.” The illusion vanishes, and as it does the high false roof above Qui-Gon caves in. He launches himself back, away from the initial collapse and toward the altar, with the vague thought that he will be sacrificed upon it, when he hears the holocron image beside him.

“—very stable and resilient to harm, were you to hide beneath it.” Beneath it. Right. He grabs the damaged holocron off the altar and vaults over it, running his hands over what looks and feels like solid stone but surely— a panel gives and he ducks inside, clutching the holocron to his chest as the desert seems to collapse around him. At least this is motion, though, motion and noise, and when he opens his eyes he finds the space he sits in dusty, and illuminated with a soft, red glow. He is sitting amongst a small trove of documents and records, and the holocron image looks downright pleased with itself. “Usurp the usurpers,” it says, then steps off of the damaged holocron and grows to nearly match Qui-Gon in size, an act which should be quite impossible—

“You—?” he asks. It chuckles, suddenly quite without interruption. 

“There are always those who came before, seeker. All things are cyclical, life and death among them. We have broken the cycle.”

“You’re a Force ghost,” he whispers. “A Sith—and a ghost.”

“Quite, quite,” it replies. “It is not eternal life, of course, but it is a step. First the mind, then the body, and then eternity.”


	34. Chapter 34

Qui-Gon isn’t sure how long he spends with the Sith ghost and its books. It must be hours, it must be years, time must be irrelevant to the Force. Regardless, he sits and listens and reads—afterwards, he can’t quite recall the words of the texts, though he’s certain they’re less dry than most of Damask’s writing. (The ghost had written in their native tongue, quite reasonably, and it is not one Qui-Gon can read. Truth be told, none left alive can read it now, not that it matters to them. There are other methods of comprehension. Had they not been a Sith, perhaps they would have mourned the loss of a language used for so many things — records and research, yes, but poetry and songs and myths and hymns — but the Sith forsake their past selves and the archivist has long been a lonesome and faded ghost.) The process for perpetuity, as the ghost calls it, is imperfect and not fully tested—quite understandably so, as one can only die once and the ghost had been unwilling to share its secrets with others while alive. 

“And after death?” Qui-Gon had asked it, and it had laughed. 

“After death, we are dead—we have nothing left to fear.” That isn’t true, though, Qui-Gon knows. Ancient tales of Sith ghosts all say they can be killed. He holds his tongue and smiles in agreement, because none of the legends say _how_. 

“You’ll want something, in return for this,” Qui-Gon tell the ghost once they’ve read everything and he’s asked everything. There is much of the practical process here, the identification of the self as a distinct entity, the perception and existence of it with and without physical form, the abject denial of the finality of death and of surrender—to anything, to anyone, even to the Force. Much of it seems antithetical to what Qui-Gon knows of the Force, but that is to be expected, isn’t it? These, like Damask’s writings, are lessons of the Sith. They must be changed and made right—they _can_ and _will_ be changed and made right, and through that, he will succeed. 

“Of course,” it replies. “We want the same thing—eternity, true eternity. I had no chance to complete this study, so I am trapped here. Trapped as this miserable shade. I bid you to pass through this place my equal and return to it my master. Come back and teach me, free me—that is what I desire.”

“How can you be certain I will come back?” he asks. “Can you see the future?” 

“If only I could, perhaps I would have lived longer,” says the ghost. “No, I think you will return because you are not as we were, and you are not as the students of Bane. Perhaps, in time, you will be quite like us, but I think not.”

“A dangerous belief— or is a bet?”

“Not dangerous. You will free me, you will leave me, or you will destroy me. In two cases, I am free from this, and in one I await another seeker for as long as I must. What have I to fear?”

Qui-Gon has no satisfactory reply to that, so he makes some noncommittal noise and tries to step away—only to realize he’s sitting, in fact, and he’s still under the altar in the forsaken temple. Outside, there is neither motion nor sound. The ghost is staring at him. 

“I need to get off this planet,” he says abruptly. “That is, if you ever want me to return with greater knowledge.”

“Right,” says the ghost. “We had ships… a hangar. I think… Yes, I think some should still be there. You do know how to fly, I suppose?”

“Even if I didn’t, the Force guides me,” says Qui-Gon, and the ghost seems quite pleased with that response. 

When he carefully pushes open the false side of the altar, the first thing he sees is bright sunlight. The high ceiling of suspended sand has collapsed, and as far as he can tell the temple is now at the desert’s surface—or perhaps the surface is now at the temple’s floor. Regardless, the air is vaguely dusty and everything smells of dryness, and there’s little else to do but try to find the hangar. Everything is silent and still, but an engine would have the _potential_ for motion, wouldn’t it? He reaches out in search of that and feels the merest glimmer of it, and when he points out the direction the ghost claps inaudibly and nods. 

—————

Time passes much more quantifiably when walking down _hallways_ that have _tiles_ and _doors_. As such, he spends a little over an hour traversing a heavily damaged section of the temple until he finds a set of blast doors without a control panel. They don’t open when pulled, but most everything opens to a lightsaber, so he gets in anyway. The ships within are ancient models, most of them in disrepair, but one seems flight-capable so he forces it active. He doesn’t have to go far, after all, he’s in the right sector to—

—the _mission_. The _rebellion_. The _chancellor_. How long has he been missing? No signal, no comm, shot down over a desert planet—and _Xanatos_ …! The ship’s comms are down too, he doesn’t bother struggling with them much, but the engines and hyperdrive seems functional for now. Trust in the Force, then, and _fly_. 

(Is this luck, then? Pure, blind, foolish luck that has saved Qui-Gon from an eternity in a sandpit? Or has this already been written and foreseen, that a student of Darth Plagueis will walk this temple and learn its secrets and bargain with an ancient ghost, that this ship will carry him to safety, that he will flee and think on the usurpation of paths? There is no such thing as luck, some say, there is only the Force and its whims.

The truth is, Sidious seeks eternity too—he and so many before him and so many after. Sidious, too, was a clever student, Sidious, too, thinks there is some grand truth that can be grasped and used — and _subjugated_ he would say, though that word never occurs to Qui-Gon — and Sidious, too, seeks it in the places the students of Bane have cast aside, because Plagueis was his teacher and Plagueis teachings sit at the back of his mind despite his best attempts. Sidious  
has sought the truth in the dark swamps of Dathomir, where witches speak to their ancestors and raise corpses as servants, and amongst the ruins of Malachor, once Korriban, and in the tombs of the long dead and the writings of failed emperors and fallen Jedi. 

The same game of dejarik is being played out twice. Komari Vosa and Xanatos vie for the chance to claim the title of Sith apprentice, while Qui-Gon and their would-be master round their own board in a mad dash to complete Plagueis’s last lesson. And then there’s Maul, turning a student’s eye to the ways of the Jedi and the curiosity of their apprentices and thinking of armies like in the times before Ruusan. There are always two, a master and an apprentice—but when’s that last been the case? Plagueis’s own master trained two students, and had himself been one of three. No, there are two _titles_ , but that’s all. Titles aren’t the beginning or the end of anything.) 

——————

Qui-Gon doesn’t hijack the freighter. It isn’t hijacking if they’d have let him on of their own volition anyway, had they known he was a Jedi, and anyway once he explains he is they’re welcoming and completely forget about the strange compulsion they just now felt to let an antique ship dock and to welcome its ragged and armed passenger with food and drink. He’s just in a rush, and they’re going the right direction anyway, and more importantly they have a working comms system so he can make sure Windu hasn’t sent out a rescue team. Shaak Ti picks up the transmission instead. 

“Welcome back,” she says without missing a beat. “Next time that you disappear for two weeks on a dangerous mission that the Council does not condone, send a note.” She is deadpan with annoyance. Qui-Gon gives her his flattest smile. Two weeks? Surely less. Surely more. All things are possible through the Force. His head hurts. 

“What, were you worried about me?” 

“Much longer and it would have been necessary to report you as killed in action. The quantity of flimsiwork is too much, in my view.”

“Well, you needn’t file anything. I’m en route properly now, and I don’t suppose I’ll be shot down twice.” 

“Try not to,” she says. “Feemor volunteered to go in your place when you vanished. Try not to get him into any further trouble as well. I have read those reports.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Qui-Gon, because honestly she could be referring to any group of reports with that. The torguta doesn’t roll her eyes, but her forehead twitches identifiably. 

“Do be _careful_ ,” she says, and signs off before he thinks to ask who was fool enough to send Feemor, kind and gentle and foolish, off on a diplomatic mission. (He likes Feemor, he does, but compared to Xanatos and Obi-Wan the man is a collection of slight shortcomings and too-slow saberplay and the sort of sincerity and honesty that real knowledge tends to stamp out. The Jedi don’t lie, but they become experts in twisting the truth—while Feemor had always opted for the plain version.) 

Perhaps it’s the will of the Force that after such internal derision, he lands to find that Feemor has either bullied or simply convinced half the rebel leadership to sit for peace talks. (They are furious at the Republic in all its distant opulence and angry at Xanatos and his honeyed words of manipulation — no one _wants_ to be used for someone else’s ends — and apoplectic at Dooku and shiny, elegant Serenni ships, so the quiet bluntness and utter boring normalcy of the Jedi who has come to bargain with them is almost refreshing. They ask if he can fix their problems, and he gazes out over scorched ground and dried wells and says that very likely he can’t, but he wants to help. It may be the first honest thing they’d heard all week.) 

——————

(Oh, speaking of diplomacy—little Padmé lands on Naboo once again, this time without fanfare. For her own safety, the chancellor had said, but she knows this is a punishment, a banishment. Naboo had once been her whole universe, but there’s so much more out there now, so much that must be changed and done and so few people willing to do anything about it. 

She is met on the landing pad by a dozen dark haired girls in matching dresses. They are no longer handmaidens, but they will always be her friends. At their head stands a girl who could be Padmé’s twin, save for a mole and a slightly stronger jaw that will show more clearly once they are grown. Naboo’s population is small and obtained, and it is never difficult to find a dozen boys or girls who look close to the same and are the same age — there are, at this moment, six men who would make passable doubles of Chancellor Palpatine, and his fair coloration and red hair are rather rare here — but this sort of mirror image is a rarity. A blessing, it had been said, fate and fortune and the Force had brought Sabé into the young queen’s service. It would take at least as much to remove her. 

“Something’s wrong,” she says, eying Padmé closely, and the other girl doesn’t say _everything’s wrong_. “Come and tell us, highness. We are still…”

“Sisters,” suggests another girl. “We are still sisters.”

“And your guardians,” Sabé adds. Padmé nods and falls into step with them and speaks freely for the first time in a long time. Thinks freely too—perhaps it’s the clear air of Naboo, the comparative quiet, but her thoughts seem to move so much faster here.)


	35. Chapter 35

“Hello Master. It’s been a while.” Feemor’s tone is warm and his wide, tanned face forms a familiar uneven smile. He is, for all intents and purposes, sincere, because he is always sincere and has taken the rule of truth-telling at face value since he was a boy. Behind him, a dozen local leaders wait for Jedi magic—some of them watch Qui-Gon with wary interest, others with visible disdain, and others yet don’t pay him any heed at all.

“There’s no need to keep calling me ‘master,’ Feemor. We share a rank,” Qui-Gon points out. True, they hadn’t spoken regularly since well before Feemor had earned his mastery, but the point stood. Feemor ducks his head, accepting the criticism.

“Sorry, old habits. You did teach me, after all. How would you prefer me to call you?” he asks. The calm politeness is annoying. (He is not young anymore, and he can tell that the man standing before him, all frayed robes and half-wild, sleepless eyes, is a far cry from the unconventional and proud but ultimately gentle teacher he remembers. Xanatos has done this, he thinks, and feels a stab of pity for the youngest of his brother-padawans. He’ll have tea with young Kenobi if they’re ever both on Coruscant at the same time again.)

Qui-Gon gives some noncommittal answer and orders Feemor to get him up to speed on the local situation instead (poor choice of words, as the man’s explanation is plodding, detailed, and very slow).

The locals whom Feemor has persuaded to his side (somehow) are apparently of the belief that both the revolt and the Serenni military response are the result of the same external meddling, someone wishing to profit from the conflict.

“Given recent events, I have been working under the assumption of Xanatos’s involvement,” Feemor adds, which only slightly spoils Qui-Gon's plan to announce, well, Xanatos's involvement.  
"He is," Qui-Gon says instead. "He, er, tried to kill me on my way over."  
"Oh," says Feemor. "Sorry. He didn't try to kill me."   
(Xanatos has never seen Feemor as a threat—people don't tend to. In a sense they're right, in that he's a poor duelist and an average diplomat and has no buried flair for strategy, but in another sense they are extremely foolish. One doesn't need any of those things to fire a weapon or send a vital communiqué or turn traitor or buy vital time for a last-ditch effort or make the split-second choice to jump on a grenade or offer a smile and a helping hand to someone on the edge of the abyss or do any number of other things that are sometimes vital and sometimes end up being threats indeed. Heroes and villains get remembered, grand battles get memorialized, but they are neither the beginning nor the end of any situation.)  
"Of course he didn't," says Qui-Gon, who's rather of the opinion that Xanatos would have succeeded had he tried. "What profit would be gained through Serenno's involvement here?" Feemor hums.   
"Not sure. Maybe you should talk to your master— I don't think Master Dooku ever liked me." (He hadn't. Dooku hadn't _dis_ liked him, particularly, just looked down on him in the way he looked down on most people.) "Turning the Outer Rim worlds against Serenno would probably be useful to someone who could fill the void in leadership, I suppose, but it doesn't seem like Serenno itself's important. Any armed conflict here would make people suffer and allow an external force to frame itself as the hero."  
Qui-Gon scoffs aloud and Feemor folds his hands in his sleeves.   
"Those are simply the local suspicions. They believe they are ... she used the term _being played_. It appears some of the others either disagree or do not care."  
"They are fools," Qui-Gon says. "Fools who do not realize they are tools of the Sith." (The irony of this sentence escapes both him and Feemor.)

——————

The get the few leaders Feemor has assembled to sign onto a statement that there was an outside force at play, but that takes far too long and comes far too late, because rebel fighters have already engaged the Serenni Defense Force in open combat. The SDF is better equipped and better funded, so it’s a poor sort of battle. (The battalion commander, the daughter of an officer who had served a prior Count Dooku, describes it later as akin to shooting down animals. She’s cold and blunt and believes the old saying that Serenno’s best diplomats are its weapons in the way people believe in their fundamental truths, and she says that to a reporter who records it and quotes her directly later. It goes viral in different circles for different reasons.) 

All in all, the negotiations are almost longer than the rebellion. Serenno strikes quickly and efficiently, if in a wildly unsanctioned way, and those who aren’t killed or captured surrender. (None of Xanatos’s promises, they think, are worth their lives. Why would they be? The Republic seems like an eternal thing, and Xanatos has promised money and power but there is nowhere to take it to. Even Hutt Space is shrinking, and the rumors of the Chiss Ascendancy are just rumors still. People need something to turn _to_ , not just rebel against, and those who would have once thought Serenno would lead them have quickly learned better.)

Feemor delivers the statement anyway, for what little good it will do now, and Qui-Gon finally manages to get through to Dooku, albeit only to get two accusatory words out before getting hung up on, and the whole sector gets put under the control of the Judicial Forces once they show up and the SDF pulls out. Palatine gives a speech about galactic security and chaos agents that sounds rather more like a religious sermon, but Qui-Gon doesn’t get to hear that because he gets lectured by Windu and Shaak Ti for three hours straight for allowing this mission to go so poorly. Feemor keeps trying to apologize, but they don’t let him get a word in edgewise. Qui-Gon stops listening after the first half hour, because it’s all reiterations. The mission was a failure, how could he have failed so badly, how could he have vanished for so long—really, it isn’t as though he can stop missiles in space or prevent some fool from opening fire on a starship two planets away, and it isn’t as though he can reach Dooku if he doesn’t want to be reached, and none of this is his fault, Windu just wants someone to blame. 

(Of course it isn’t. Part of it is blame, yes, because Qui-Gon had forced his way onto a mission, abandoned it, and returned just in time for a great many people to die, but the larger part is worry. Fear, too, and the fully rational sort. The Jedi are fraying, the Sith have returned, and what had seemed like stability is rapidly being revealed as a patchwork of half-measures, bargains, and default judgements held together by the quickly-fading concept of an eternal Republic. And when that gives, what then? The Jedi have no answers, and that is frightening.)

——————

He needs to go back to Jedha, or somewhere else where the Force hangs in the air like vapor, somewhere he can be surrounded by it, one with it, closer to those secrets that seem to lurk just on the far side of a veil. He needs to—

“I really am very sorry, Master,” says Feemor. Qui-Gon blinks. 

“What for this time?” he asks before he turns around to find Feemor is clutching a tranquilizer pistol. 

“I got a message from one of the Healers, I’m supposed to bring you to the Halls of Healing as soon as we land.” Again with that crooked, stupid smile. “Should I ask politely first or are you tired of my wasting your time?”

“What do you think?” Qui-Gon asks, and moves on a not-quite instinct to grab him by the throat through the Force. Too late, though, because the pistol goes off before Qui-Gon can close his hand, and he hits the ground with a thud. The last thing he hears, far above and far away, is Feemor apologizing _again_. 

———————

(On Naboo, Padmé gathers tutors, books, lessons. She is going to go back to Coruscant, and when she does she will go armed with the Republic’s greatest weapons—on old Serenno the greatest diplomats are stored in the armory, but in Padmé’s view she is best armed with knowledge. Many aren’t willing or able to give her the information she seeks, so she calls Uncle Ona to find out who might. It takes time, but eventually she sits with her handmaidens in her room in the dark, a dozen near-identical faces gazing into the projector, and hears a lesson from one of Kalee’s few surviving historians. The old kaleesh speaks in a language Padmé and her friends have never heard, and a battered protocol droid translates for her in a strange, lilting accent. 

“Why do you wish to know this?” the old kaleesh asks. “In these records, you humans are not golden.”

“We are never golden,” Padmé says. “It’s just painted on. I want to know what we are at our worst. I want to know how we can be made better. I want to know how to stop what happened to your people from ever happening again.”

“It will always happen, as long as there are those who see monsters and barbarians,” says the historian. “Look at me. What do you see me as?” She is masked and monstrous and uneven in shape, a nightmare of a creature projected against the arches and white walls of Padmé’s home. 

“I see… I want to see a _teacher_ ,” Padmé says. “I want to learn to see a teacher.” 

And the old Kaleesh gives her lesson, and that night Padmé weeps for the dead of a world she’s never seen. The sun rises and she dries her tears, hugs her friends in thanks, and tells them they’re going to talk to the gungans, because they have historians as well. 

It is a rare thing, to seek the truth as it is rather than as it suits you. Padmé should be commended for that, because she seeks sincerely and doesn’t think, for now, that if this information were to spread it would destroy the very Republic she loves. Not any one thing, of course, but knowledge is power and power gets used. On the other hand, foreknowledge is a weapon: if she shatters her illusions ow, the yacht shatter later, and she can go to Coruscant armed to the teeth with idealism and plans for change. But in the dark, sometimes, rarely, she thinks Coruscant’s highrise halls and chrome and wonder what sort of center of the galaxy it really is. The galaxy is mud and death and dust and ashes, too, and if Coruscant’s elite could taste _that_ —but the thought never fully materializes, because she’s the daughter of an elite house herself, and she cannot burn others without burning herself.)

———————

Qui-Gon wakes in the Halls of Healing and says all the right things to the questions he’s posed. They don’t believe him, clearly, but they can’t hold him, and given half a chance he runs. The mission isn’t over. Xanatos is still out there—so many things are still out there. (Truth, eternity, the strange girl in his dream.)

“A Jedi does not deal in revenge,” says the old master, one of the many who never made it to the council itself, who tries to stop him on the way out.

“This isn’t revenge,” Qui-Gon assures him. “This is fixing my own errors. Jedi do deal in _that_ insofar as we acknowledge our errors.” (Again, the irony passes him by, of course, but it’s the correct thing to say.)

Jedha, he thinks, and then… wherever he’s pointed.


	36. Chapter 36

Qui-Gon’s second escape to Jedha goes more smoothly than the first, perhaps because he hasn’t got a holocron in his pocket this time or Maul lurking at his elbow. The blind acolyte falls into pace with him partway along the path to the temple, a bag of some sweet-smelling baked good slung over his shoulder. (He walks these paths by rote memorization now, and the locals know him and the pilgrims know his robes, so the Force always brings him a clear route to his destination. It helps that he can hear footsteps and vehicle motors, of course, and that there are many ways to distinguish people that aren’t sight, but he likes to place it upon the Force. It’s like that old mantra, one of many shared among the Jedi and the Guardians of the Whills and — though they don’t know it — a dozen now vanish sects around the galaxy: _we are one with the Force and the Force is with us_.)

“You’re back again,” says the acolyte. (He remembers the sound of the Jedi’s robe when he walks and odd sensation like a coiled spring and the long paces, rushing while trying to appear unhurried. The Jedi are strange creatures to him. He’s never once hurried so.)

“Yes,” Qui-Gon says, and passes a dubious look over the boy. The Force is omnipresent here, and yet the acolytes seem ordinary—the sort of people you could find anywhere at all in the galaxy. Why? Shouldn’t this place draw the worthy instead? Shouldn’t this be a beating heart for the galaxy? Shouldn’t it be made greater? 

(It is the Pilgrims’ Moon, and it is dusty, and it has all the greatness it needs. A Jedi can be great without sitting on the Council, Qui-Gon knows this, but he cannot extend the thought to encompass a greatness that is not big and bright and impactful, that isn’t prophesied and dreamt of by other great things, that isn’t remembered in bold letters and prayers. But who is greater: the hero who struck down the enemy and ended the war, or an old teacher who took a weeping child by the hand and sat and talked for hours and thus saw no enemy and no war at all? Of course, you could say the time for the latter is long past now. The war will come, for the enemy has risen— but the Sith can be one or they can be many, their allies can be few or none or many, and that makes a difference, doesn’t it?) 

“That thing you’re looking for,” says the acolyte. “Do you really think you’ll find it here?”

“The Force guides me,” Qui-Gon answers curtly. 

“The Force guides all things,” says the acolyte. Of course it does. Any student of the Force learns that lesson early and often, but at the moment it feels like a slap to the face or a particularly harsh insult. The acolyte seems unaware. “Why does it bring you here?”

“To learn the truth of it.” The acolyte hums at this response. (He thinks perhaps the Jedi can understand things on a larger scale than any Guardian here, or perhaps this Jedi is simply very proud, or perhaps they are speaking slightly different versions of the same language. In any case, he doesn’t quite think the truth of the Force can be found. The Force is the Force, and it is with them.)

“I wish you the best on your journey, Master Jedi,” he says. And Qui-Gon fights the urge to scoff.

The boy is right, however. He doesn’t find what he seeks on Jedha. Convergence within the Force or no, it is a place for pilgrims and those seeking silence, and Qui-Gon is sick half to death of silence. 

(Oh, of course he doesn’t find what he’s seeking here. Any child could tell you the truth isn’t something you can find in a _place_. You can cross the galaxy thrice in each direction, meditate on every planet and moon, circle every star, dig beneath every surface, and you may still miss the truth in passing as you go. Smaller things, too— you needn’t pray at the tombs of Korriban to find the lessons of the Sith-come-before, and you can kneel at the tombs until you die and learn nothing of them. A child can be raised in the Jedi Temple and learn nothing of the Jedi way, while a farmer’s child on a backwater can quite accidentally find and embrace those same philosophies. 

There is a story commonly told among the t’surr, mocking those who claimed to be more civilized. In the story, a t’surr travels with an educated man, serving as his bodyguard. They pass an elaborate shrine, and the man tells his bodyguard that it marks the place where a great sage attained enlightenment. Curious about the concept, the t’surr asks what is was that the sage taught, but the man laughs. No one knows, of course, because the sage had been burned for speaking out of turn—but this is where she sat when she attained enlightenment, so here her killers and the children of her killers sit too, hoping for the same, for surely it is holy.

Perhaps the sage had sat upon a convergence in the Force and gazed up at stars blinking through the leaves on an ancient tree and this had helped her along the way to enlightenment, yes, but countless others had done the same and seen only leaves and stars.) 

—————

(It is the end of the year 969 after Ruusan. The rebel factions of the Outer Rim fear Serenno and its senator and its armies, but Dooku is one man and the Outer Rim is vast. Instead of a single grand revolt, there are a thousand smaller ones. Some are driven by the Sith, of course, but others rise for reasons all their own. The Knights of the Core, one of many terrorist organizations that legally does not exist but unofficially sees the vague support of a great many humans in high places, moves for the destruction of alien colonies on outlying worlds. It finds a surprising amount of them armed and ready for battle—not, perhaps, against humanocentrists, but against any number of threats that may come. 

It’s an easy story that works its way around cantinas and spaceports after that. Didn’t you know? Humans want us all stamped out. Haven’t you heard that chancellor, haven’t you seen their armies? Haven’t you seen Serenno and its mad Jedi master, haven’t you heard all this talk of the Sith? Didn’t you see what became of Kalee, what happened to Yinchorr, what’s happening now? Not everyone listens, of course, but enough do because enough know—the Republic was wrought by humans and it will serve the ends of humans, and all other races are animals to them when the lights go out. 

This is the part where it should say the truth is more complicated than that. In some ways it is, because there are good people even among the highest echelons of human elites. Padmé weeps for the kaleesh sincerely and holds her uncle as close as any blood relation and is ever so eager to learn more about her gungan neighbors. Bail Organa has grown into his game face, but his heart aches over every casualty report he sees. A student called Mon Mothma doesn’t _scream_ but argues herself hoarse in defense of a people completely unlike her own in a classroom with high, marble walls. The Jedi raise children from myriad worlds together as classmates and siblings. All of this is true. How much does any of it matter, right at this moment, to the larger galaxy? 

The year 970 begins with explosions, with Republic outposts on far-flung worlds as the targets. Jedi investigate and come back empty-handed—the immediate culprits can be found, but half are paid and the other half mind-tricked and none can say much about the ultimate goals. Dooku returns from a trip to Serenno and delivers a veritable shipful of would-be assassins to the Judiciary Forces with the air of a man who has had to do his own pest control, and it doesn’t strike him as odd that not one among them is human. A recording circulates on the holonet of the old man with his harsh face and aloof bearing standing over his bound and disarmed prisoners. _This is how the Republic deals with uprisings_ , some say. _This is how humans would have us live_ , others whisper. 

During that time, Qui-Gon is haunting Wild Space, looking for confirmation of a rumor that sometimes there is planet that is gone the next day. He doesn’t find it, of course, because such things keep their secrets well. He finds many other things, though, and stories of far more — living ships, blue-skinned soldiers in orderly rows and threats of chaos born of things beyond the edge of the galaxy. He crosses paths with Chiss scouts and they let each other pass after sizing each other up. He sees, up close, abandoned colonies from eras past and ruins attributed to the ancient rakata. He walks paths thousands before him walked and wonders about ghosts.)

————————

(“No one has been sent after Master Jinn,” Maul says. Vos is on a mission, so is Tachi, and Eerin is off at some medical conference, so for once Kenobi lacks his honor guard. Maul has caught him in the training halls—a rarity, nowadays, as the man seems in high demand for some unspecified skill.

“It is expected he will return,” says Kenobi. “Besides, we cannot spare so many as it would take to track him down.”

“It is expected?” Maul echoes. The phrasing is odd, though he has grown accustomed to the Jedi tendency to depersonalize action. Kenobi raises his head to glare at him—a moment’s glare, soon replaced by a level stare. 

“Do _you_ expect otherwise?” he asks. Maul stares back. 

“I did not make him go,” he replies. Kenobi scoffs and doesn’t argue, instead turning his back and making a show of departing. 

The Jedi will not let Maul _work_. It is understandable that they doubt his intentions, or perhaps his loyalty, or, like Kenobi, blame him for Jinn’s behavior and departure, but it is… frustrating. He’s learned to follow the logic of his captors, he has learned to understand it, and that stymies rage to an extent. Where he’d reached for fury, he can now reach for… presumably something else, eventually, something that could ward his mind against Sidious’s attacks, but he cannot learn _that_ from the small pack of apprentices that has claimed him as an unofficial member. Twice, he has attempted to plead his case to a more senior Jedi, and twice he has been rebuffed. Watching Kenobi’s retreating figure, he decides to make a third attempt. 

The togruta master is younger than the rest of the Council, and she wears ornaments that sparkle and jangle as she walks. The youngest students here think she is beautiful for it, while the older ones think she is beautiful for her face. Maul thinks, at his most childishly stupid, that her markings are a mirror of his own, white on red where his are black. 

“Kenobi says you are … lacking people in the field,” he tells her, then tacks on the title as an afterthought. “Master.” She tilts her head, and the ornaments on her montrals make a soft ringing noise. 

“And what is it you wish to do, based upon that?” They had asked the same thing the other two times. It is a test, and not one Maul wishes to fail again. He will not earn his revenge on his former master sitting around and reading, or showing his little following the proper way to handle a staff. Before he had offered them what he’d thought they wanted — _I want to fight for you_ once, and _I want to help_ the second. Perhaps honesty will do the trick, they do keep preaching it. 

“I want to learn,” he says. “I cannot learn only within your temple. Let me out, let me help, let me fight for you and I will learn your ways far better than I can here.”

A smile pulls at the corners of the togruta Jedi’s lips.

“Well,” she says. “That is a start.”)

——————

The year is 971 before Qui-Gon winds his way to an uncharted and unexplored world he will learn is called Rattatak. It is only uncharted and unexplored by the Republic, of course— in many other circles it is known well enough. He lands safely enough, then starts in surprise. The Force is strong here, and it is strong with the Dark Side. Fire and fury, blood and vengeance, and the distant not-sound of a girl screaming. 

_Here_ , something is waiting for him. But what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also: check out this lovely art of Qui-Gon and Dooku from a few chapters ago! https://layersoftweed.tumblr.com/post/630524637509484544/read-my-friends-absolutely-mad-fic-long-united


	37. Chapter 37

(It is the year 971, and Padmé Amidala has been elected to her second term as queen. It isn’t done. Traditionalists click their tongues. She is almost too old, and even three years before she’d been too world-weary and wary to possess the divine innocence which earns Naboo’s child queens their reigns. It also isn’t done for one to have two nonconsecutive terms. It has happened anyway, because divine innocence is one thing but Padmé Amidala is known and loved and righteous, and divine innocence dies when it’s shot at by invaders. 

Padmé ties up her elaborate gowns and shoots targets alongside her soldiers and to walk through mud and learn about crop conditions and to stand in knee-deep water as two dozen gungan girls swarm around her, patting curiously at thick fabrics and dark hair and warm, painted skin. There is horror and wickedness in the galaxy, in the Republic, and Padmé knows she is just one person, but she can change things here and now. The farmers see their petitions dealt with, the gungan girls get to buy dresses on the streets of Theed and then buy starmaps and books and holorecordings of galactic politicians to watch in their underwater cities. Schools are built in open air on waterfronts, and the many-times-great grandchildren of sworn enemies will be classmates. This doesn’t solve everything, of course, but it’s change and change for the better. Given time enough, such incremental change could alter the face of a planet, or even a galaxy.

There isn’t time enough, of course. That’s the tragedy of it. Padmé commissions open-air schools and new fighters and security systems, and eventually funds will run dry and she and her successors will have to pick, and then war will come and the choice will be made for them. There is one bitter equality in this, however: when chaos comes for Naboo, some of the new fighters will be flown by gungan pilots, the first of their kind to strike for the stars, and they will have learned mechanics and navigation first at open air schools on the waterfront.) 

—————

In places like Rattatak, uncivilized and brutal places, they call Qui-Gon a sorcerer. It has been some time since he has bothered correcting them, because what is a Jedi to a barbarian? What is the difference between what he does, what Xanatos does, what Sidious presumably does, to someone who neither knows nor cares for ancient feuds or old Republics? It doesn’t matter here, so when they ask if he is a sorcerer he says that he is and they look upon him with fear. 

They shouldn’t fear a Jedi, maybe, but the Jedi don’t protect them. They simply fear power they cannot possess and things they do not understand. Some are less leery than others, though, and are willing to answer his questions. 

There is a tsic-soo haunting the planet, the locals told him, some in fearful whispers and some with a strange pride. A tsic-soo, a Sith-witch — this is not a phrase commonly used in the Republic as much as it is an echo of a dead language last heard in the galaxy’s underworld. Qui-Gon wishes idly for a translator when he hears it, for his old padawan, for access to the Archive to check the phrase’s use. He wishes for such things quite often, but shallowly and idly, the way one wishes for a useful tool.

(He’d meant to check in on Obi-Wan not long after he’d left, and then he’d meant to check in on the boy’s bornday, and then he’d meant to check in on Anakan, and then… he hadn’t done any of it. There’d just been so much else, and then there’d never seemed an appropriate time, and then it hadn’t been the will of the Force. He remembers Obi-Wan as a young padawan and Anakin as a child, and it doesn’t occur to him that Anakin is now almost thirteen and mostly legs or that Obi-Wan has a beard and battle-scars on his hands. It isn't that he’s forgotten Obi-Wan, or stopped caring, anything like that—were he confronted with the concept he’d love his old apprentice as much as he ever has. These things are just far from the front of Qui-Gon’s mind at the moment.)

The tsic-soo hunts men, they tell him. She kills women too, sometimes, but she _hunts_ men—there is a story of a crew of pirates, picked off one by one and later found slaughtered, the men tortured to death and the women killed with clean blows to the heart. There are other stories too, that she eats young boys alive, that she’ll steal children who wander too far afield, that some, in their folly, had followed her and pledged their allegiance and she’d burned out their tongues. 

“Burned?” Qui-Gon prompts. The rattataki woman nods vehemently. Her face is nearly human, but hairless and studded with metal ornamentation, and her Basic is labored, as if she is slowly translating each word she needs to speak.

“She took — took sorcerer’s sword,” she explains, then bites her lip, teeth clinking on metal. “There is word, yes? For that weapon you have?”

“A lightsaber,” Qui-Gon says, and wonders if it translates to anything at all on the other end.

“Lightsaber,” she repeats. “She took lightsaber from dead sorcerer, many years gone. Outsider, like you.” A cold shiver threatens to travel up Qui-Gon’s spine. 

“The tsic-soo, she killed a J—a sorcerer?” he presses. The rattataki makes a low sound like a hum. That, she says, she doesn’t know, for the sorcerer had died and the tsic-soo had appeared and that had been that. 

(There are things the rattataki woman doesn’t tell him and that he won’t think to ask. She doesn’t say the sorcerer had come around her city once, years ago, with a little girl student, and that they’d run a local crime family out of town and wiped the citizens’ debts. She doesn’t say the girl had laughed like bells ringing and floated shiny baubles around her head, then followed the sorcerer like a child does their parent, nor does she say the sorcerer had looked down smiled so fondly as if the girl had been his own blood. She doesn’t say that after the sorcerer had died, the crime family had come again—and that the tsic-soo had come too, with her foster-father’s sword and a scream like death itself, and had killed them in the city center. She doesn’t say the tsic-soo had protected them once, had hunted raiders and pirates and protected families and young girls and those who were old and sick. 

To the rattataki, it doesn’t matter much that she did all those things, though they make for a sad first part to a story, because now her bloodlust is no longer sated killing the wicked. It’s no longer justice, and soon it will no longer be vengeance, and then there will really be a monster here. They cannot slay the tsic-too, nor can they restore her to the child she was, because both those things require magic. She watches Qui-Gon and wonders which he will do.)

——————

Qui-Gon has to find her, whoever she is. The witch who’d appeared upon the death of a lost Jedi, she draws the Force around her like a storm—less in use, and more in importance, a wild warning that she is capable of something drastically important. He wonders briefly about the late and lost comrade, of course, but there are many who have gone off into the galaxy and never returned. Some, likely, are dead, some are fallen, some are married happily on quiet moons, and one it appears found his way here, to die in a place where he was only ever an _outsider_ and a _sorcerer_.

He bribes the rattataki woman to hide his ship from pirates and raiders — not with credits, he’s learned better, but with ration bars and cloth from a system away — and abandons the small city for the hills and plateaus the tsic-soo is said to roam and lets the Force guide him. He follows it past old crash sites, picked clean by all sorts of scavengers, past desiccated corpses that no one came for, stripped of their valuables, past rock walls scored with burns from a lightsaber. The tsic-soo’s wrath is palpable in the air—but so is her grief. This creature is nothing like Maul, he thinks; Maul knows nothing but the Dark, but the tsic-soo had once known joy and love and lost it and that makes her rage all the greater. 

(The Sith know this. Why else would they bid their apprentices to kill what they love, then train them to kill their own teachers? It isn’t the darkness, it’s the fall that makes it. Maul has been raised to be a weapon, not a champion or a lord, and he has had no one to lose and nowhere to fall to. He was also meant to die. There’s something quite different about living in despair.)

Later on, Qui-Gon will say he found his target in the Force, but what actually happens is that he pauses to squint at a vaguely familiar burn pattern — he’d trained under Dooku, he recognizes the rudiments of a makashi style — when the tsic-soo vaults over a cliff with her lightsaber drawn and nearly gets the drop on him. She’s fast and feral but — luckily for him — barely half trained, more used to hunting those armed with blasters. She still manages to cut him in the arm and kick him in the face before he disarms her, and then she just _bites_ him. 

“Really?” he says, which is possibly the correct response to getting chewed on by someone’s pet or by a youngling in a crèche, but rather a stupid response to anything done by a Dark Side-wielding teenager of indeterminate species. The girl snarls at him, but doesn’t bite again, and he’s not stupid—he can put together most of the story. A Jedi had died and his apprentice, likely found on this very same isolated world, had gone mad with grief, seeking revenge. It’s a familiar story. (There is a reason Jedi often work in teams—it is the _left alone_ of it that makes the pain all the worse. Even gentle Bant Eerin had raged and fought in her grief, and she’d felt her master’s death from the safety of the Jedi Temple.) 

“Die,” the tsic-soo girl hisses. She is a skinny thing, pale and sharp-cheeked and hardly full-grown, and her voice is hoarse and he has her awkwardly pinned against the cliff face with his elbow, his foot, and also the Force. It’s not imposing. He thinks if she runs out of fight, pinned like that, she’ll start to cry, and once that’s through she may be made to see sense. (He doesn’t quite think _once her defenses are broken_ , but the sentiment is there, isn’t it?) 

“No, I’m not going to do that,” says Qui-Gon. He raises the saber she had used, lets it float just out of her reach. “Was this your master’s?” A furious hiss, frantic and pointless scrabbling to get free, and then a rather unwilling nod. She hates him, she hates everything. “He taught you well. I’ve seen the places you practiced — your master taught you some makashi?” 

“S-some,” the girl says. She takes a shaky breath. “You are a Jedi.” It feels like a question, like a plea. _You are a Jedi, we weren’t forgotten, we weren’t abandoned_. _You are a Jedi, you've come to end this at last._ _You are a Jedi, it’s been years, where have you been?_

“I am,” says Qui-Gon, and it almost feels like a lie. He’s been gone for so very long, after all, but still he tells her his name and asks her own. It takes her too long to reply.

“Asajj. My name is Asajj Ventress,” the girl says. “Why have you come?”

“Looking for you,” he answers, and that’s almost true, isn’t it? He’d been looking for something so important, and he’d found it, found her. If Asajj takes it to mean he’d been seeking her and her dead master out, that’s not his concern. She stares up at him doubtfully. 

“For … Master Narec?” (She wants it to be true, desperately. She wants her master’s friends to have been looking for him, she wants this strange man with the smell of ancient magic about him to have been an old friend, a hero come to save the day on a world where heroes don’t get to exist, because otherwise she’s going to burn until she burns out and she will bathe Rattatak in blood before she does. The Dark Side consumes, but you can fear what consumes you.) 

“For Ky,” lies Qui-Gon, who remembers Narec from long-gone days. They’d been students together, and the choice of who would be Dooku’s apprentice was narrowed down to two—Ky, the better swordsman but lacking in ambitions, or Qui-Gon, so prone to flights of fancy but so clever with the ways of the Force. “And for any student. I”m glad I found you at last.”

It’s a small lie, unimportant, and it does its job—the girl takes a rattling breath and collapses in tears, more a broken child than a monster now. He catches her gently and lets her sob against his shoulder, and wonders of the interconnectedness of things. After a blind quest, after so many years, here he has stumbled upon Ky Narec’s student, at the edge of the galaxy, and now—

—Now there is no where to take her but Coruscant.


	38. Chapter 38

(The rumor that spreads through distant Rattatak after that goes like this: A foreign sorcerer came here and raised a local girl to be a creature such as himself. When he was slain, the girl became a tsic-soo, because that is what happens when wrath and magic run untempered, that is why magic is _dangerous_ , don’t you know? And then the sorcerer’s brother came and swore he’d raise the tsic-soo as his own child, for that was their people’s way. But what of this stranger— had he his brother’s kind eyes and open manner? did he, like his brother, stop to help people he passed on the street and stand up for the weak? No, this one’s eyes were distant and he only stood to look down, but he took the tsic-soo as his child and now— now we are here and they are not, and perhaps tomorrow will be brighter.

Ky Narec had been a good person. He had not, perhaps, been the best of Jedi, because the Jedi must think of grand designs and the will of the Force and the past, present, and future all as one, but he had been a good person. On Rattatak they do not mourn the dead, for the dead are myriad, but sometimes he will be thought of warmly when people pass through an alleyway unharmed or when another year passes and the Yarus clan does not demand tribute, and those who wish to fill the void of monsters will think twice, look to the empty hills and the shadows, and wonder about _magic_. It is not enough to save Rattatak from the constant conflicts that roil it, but it is enough to slow them, just a bit, just a little, and Narec would find that a worthy legacy.)

Qui-Gon does indeed walk back into the city with Asajj by his side. The girl is wrapped in his cloak, which looks absurdly oversized on her, and has her arms crossed over her chest. The fight and the fire have gone out of her, and only grief remains. It looks like it’s eating her. The locals they pass watch warily as if they expect her to leap and tear out their throats, so Qui-Gon keeps a hand on the girl’s head—equal parts comfort and control, as any master would know. (They fear Asajj, yes, of course they do, they know she is a long night away from being only a monster, but they fear the tall foreign sorcerer too. The tsic-soo is a familiar threat, but a man who goes to face her without fear and brings her back bent to his will? That too, they think, could be a long night away from being a fiend. Don’t you know? This is why magic is _dangerous_.)

He also does indeed tell them he will take their monster as his own ward—finish her training. Part of it is sympathy for the girl, lost and adrift, and part of it is for Ky, whom he remembers in the vague and fond way one remembers childhood friends, part of it is the desperate urge to have a second chance at Xanatos — here, too, is a padawan who has lost a father, in a sense, and fallen in the Dark, and _this_ time Qui-Gon knows better — but more of it is curiosity. The Force has brought him to this girl the way it brought him to Anakin, so both must be of great importance. Anakin, he understands, because he has known that prophecy for decades on end, but what is the value of one half-feral girl? (What is the value of a grain of rice? That depends on what is done with it.)

The rattataki stare dubiously but do not question him, and his ship is safely recovered. (The pirate band that had most recently been raiding the area, after all, had met a brutal and bloody end.) They do not thank him either, for ridding them of their monster, and he rather thinks they should. But, well, they are halfway to monsters themselves, he thinks, barbarians at the edge of space who live ruled by the brutal and strong. They cannot be expected to know when a favor is done for them. He wonders briefly if Asajj is of the same species as the locals, then discards the idea; her gray skin darkens in the planet’s harsh sunlight, leaving lighter patches under her gauntlets, and while they are hairless as rocks she has soft, almost white-blonde down atop her head. Whatever she is, she is meant for places other than this, so Qui-Gon waves her onto the ship and they begin the long, circuitous route back to Coruscant. She’s oddly quiet now, but there will be plenty of time in the void of space to loosen her tongue.

——————

(Alderaan is a beautiful planet. Master Shaak Ti can enjoy the aesthetics of this assignment as she passes down paved, even streets and past high buildings of white synthstone, but her current companion cannot. Beauty is lost on Maul, though the Shaak Ti rather thinks he will learn to understand it. For now he asks questions—the age of the city, the age of the vineyards beyond, the makeup of the synthstone, why this and not a more natural material, the differences between types of grapes. They aren’t the right questions, not yet. A padawan would ask, perhaps, why the governor of such a quiet place had assassins after him, or why the task called for Jedi at all, and then a padawan would learn. It is a long and complicated story about families dating back to the Old Republic and very very old bargains. Shaak Ti, perpetual outsider among humans, has come here herself and with another nonhuman apprentice at her side, for a very simple reason: ancient blood feuds are potent by night and when local men drink heavily of grape-wine, but they seem like barbaric and far-off things when you look into the eyes of a Jedi who, as far as you know, is so far from human that she understands no part of what drives you. 

Instead of approaching the governor’s palace, she takes a turn and walks to the home of the family she knows sent the assassin, and as she moves her pace changes from nearly human to the rolling, languid walk of the savannah predator she also is. Behind her, she can sense Maul’s confusion. 

“I did not bring a human boy here,” she says calmly. No, she has not brought a human, and she has given him little golden bands to wear upon his horns and clean black robes sewn in the style worn by mirialan knights. He doesn’t understand _why_ she has done any of this, but she is a Jedi master and he is not, so presumably she has her reasons. He can sense no mockery in this, so he tries to shed his stiff posture and move like he’s hunting. He can sense the Jedi’s gaze linger briefly on his gloves, but she doesn’t comment and just beckons him on. 

At the gates of the house she addresses him again: “This is a lesson about the power of questions.” She doesn’t add it is a lesson about the pointlessness of revenge, because some lessons are best taught and not pointed out. 

“Which questions?” Maul asks. The togruta’s lip twitches. 

“Let’s start with why.”

It is, indeed, the only question she poses. Her manner is polite, if distant, and she tilts her head in a way that highlights her sharply angled eyes and the gleam of her sharp teeth, and her ornaments — and the bands on Maul’s horns — reflect and amplify the warm light. 

“We may dislike the governor, however—“

“Pardon, but why?”

“It is his family we take issue with.” _Why_? “He is an Arlieri, they are criminals.” _Why_? “They always have been.” _Why_? “That is how they are.” _Why_? “It is in their blood.” _Why_? “It begins in the Old Republic, Master Jedi, you know Alderaan was not always so peaceful.” _Why_? “Once there were wicked people, criminal clans who ruled this place like barbarians.” _Why_? “For money, for power, for the thrill of it— why does anyone do anything? The Arlieris were among them, and the governor is an Arlieri, so we are justified in hating him.” _Why_? “For the sins of his predecessors. They reflect upon him.” _Why_? “Because that is how it is, Master Jedi.” _Why_?

They go in circles, the local nobles and the strange, alien Jedi, while her horned student watches silently, his yellow gaze unreadable. None alive remember the start of the feud, but it has gone on forever. _Why_? Well, no one is sure, but it must have been the Arlieris who started it. _Why_? 

They do not confess to sending the assassin, but after two hours of attempting to explain a position that is nothing less than irrational, they relent and agree to leave the governor in peace. Shaak Ti bids them good day and compliments the blooming vines in the garden as she leaves. One of the family’s daughters is bold enough to compliment her bangles in return, and she and Maul leave before the sun sets. 

“… And that is all?” he asks her, once they’re out of hearing range. She blinks steadily at him.

“Would you have there be something else?”

“Yes,” he answers without thinking. Shake Ti tilts her head. 

“Why?”

“… Did the Moritins not attempt to kill him?”

“Most likely, yes.”

“Should they not be punished?”

“Why? The governor asked to prevent further attacks. They will not try again.”

“… _why_?”

“Ah. That they will have to answer themselves, first. From what you heard, do you think they will be able to?” Maul frowns. 

“You knew this would happen going in.” It’s an accusation. “Why?”

“There is nothing clever to that. When I was a padawan, I came here with my master on a similar case. Back then, there was a Moritin governor, and it was the Arlieris who wished her dead—much for the same reasons. Before that, again, the Moritins attacked an Arlieri governor. Once per generation they play this cycle out, and once per generation we come and show them their folly.”

“Why?”

“Because we hope each time that the lesson will stick. And each time, we have the opportunity to save lives.” Maul nods and tells her he understands, and in part he does. The actions, at least, are comprehensible, even if the philosophy remains bizarre. 

If both he and Shaak Ti finish this mission convinced they have scored a victory over the other, it is to be expected. She has taught a lesson and he has learned one, and water can wear down even the highest mountain in time—what strength have the teachings of the Sith against the steady flow of better things? She has taught a lesson and he has learned one, and every piece of knowledge can be turned to his advantage—what strength have the teachings of the Jedi against one who can understand them and pick them apart?)

——————

In the cold and darkness of hyperspace, Asajj sleeps the sleep of an exhausted child. Safe at last, found at last, in the care of a master and not all alone in the world. The shattered, corrupted padawan bond reaches out for Qui-Gon like a blind, grabbing hand, and he lets it. If the girl is _his_ , after all, she cannot be taken from him, not in this state, not unless they want to harm her more. Not like they took Anakin from him. No, he’ll return victorious, with a resolution to the Ky’s mission log and with a new apprentice destined for unknown glories. Perhaps she is the key, then, or she and Anakin both. He’ll have to see—to _wait_ , aggravatingly enough, but there is time. There is time and there is the Force.


	39. Chapter 39

They can’t refuse her, she’s already a padawan. It’s clear, really, that they want to — if they’d sensed darkness beneath Anakin’s sunny presence it must fill off of Asajj in waves — but she can stumble through the correct recitations, what few she’s been taught, and demonstrates her skills with a practice saber with far more certainty. She’s quick and she’s graceful and Qui-Gon can practically feel the thought as it passes through the minds of the assembled masters: _what if the wrong teacher found her, what if it had been Sidious, or Xanatos, or even mad Vosa, what sort of monster would they draw out?_

Her katas concluded, the girl steps obediently to Qui-Gon’s side. It’s a practiced motion, and when she looks up at him for confirmation there’s a split second’s confusion in her angled blue eyes—of course there is, she’s still half-expecting Ky. Shaak Ti makes a slightly sympathetic expression, not that the girl sees it, and Windu frowns so hard Qui-Gon has the brief and stupid thought that his face will get stuck that way.

(Shaak Ti is merciful to children, perhaps more than is rational, and to her Asajj is a child even if the memory of blood linger about her. Sometimes she thinks it is because she isn't human—togruta children can run early but finish growing late, and Jedi knighted at twenty, regardless of species, strike her as not yet fully formed. Asajj is younger than that, and Shaak Ti thinks whatever her species is grows slowly too. But then, she thinks, mercy to children is right and good, mercy in general is, because in legends from the Old Republic it is mercy and a gentle hand that draws the fallen back from the Dark Side, and here and now she has seen that very philosophy bear fruit: Maul had been brought to them burning blind with hate and fury, and now—now he pauses, bites down on anger, speaks softly to younglings, even shares his food without being bidden. He still fumes, of course, still hates, still schemes, but every journey has its first steps. Mercy for children, mercy for the lost, but none left for those who actively turn their backs on what they have—she knows she must temper this from both ends if she feels the urge to sweep the bloodstained girl away to safety and throw Jinn from the council hall by the scruff of his neck.

Windu sees Jinn standing in shattered glass. He has expected that, since the man's disappearance, but that doesn't make the sight pleasant. The girl is cracked too, a pattern like a spiderweb across her face, darkness within and without, and the silently blaring warning that something could _become_ of her. Perhaps this is Jinn's Force-given gift, coming back to the Temple with creatures that could _become_ —little Xanatos, so bright with power, young Kenobi, youthful sullenness replaced with quiet determination, Anakin, shining with a new sun's potential for life, for power, for destruction, the Sith apprentice, so much calmer three years on one could almost think him healing, and now this girl. Xanatos has _become_ already, he prays Kenobi has too, and for the rest... 

_Weapons_ , whispers something in the back of his mind, that darkness he must tread on the edge of. _Weapons for the coming war. Better they are yours than someone else's._ That isn't right, people aren't weapons. _Aren't they? What is that Sith apprentice but a blade stolen from Sidious's arsenal? What in times of war, is a star in the form of a child but a bomb? What is Xanatos now, and Kenobi—_ Kenobi is a diplomat, a statesman, a bright and well-spoken young man in the mould of his master's master. _A clever statesman in peacetime, perhaps, but what becomes of those in war?_ Windu knows, he knows, of course he knows, he's a Jedi not a fool, and he has seen many of the myriad small wars of the galaxy that have started and ended in his life. He knows what can make a Jedi into a _butcher_ , what can make a statesman into a tyrant, he knows how blood stains on hands wash off but stick on the soul, and he fears it. ... There is no emotion, there is peace, and he must have faith in the Jedi as an institution, as he always has.)

—————

They can’t refuse her, so they don't refuse her, but it is with much doubt and dubious stares that they send Qui-Gon and his new padawan on their way. The stares outside the hall are more curious, but even more plentiful, and a pack of younglings stops mid-game to gawk openly. (They have never seen someone quite like her, after all.) Asajj stares back and bars her teeth, and Qui-Gon remembers a rumor about eating children. 

“Come, Padawan,” he orders. The girl blinks, shakes her head, and the tension in the air breaks. The younglings scatter, discordant murmurs rising from them about the color of the sky. 

“The sky…?” Asajj murmurs, confused. “Is that… is that a mantra?” (On Rattatak the sky is red by daylight, and on Coruscant it’s blue if you’re high up enough to see it, and on a hundred other planets it is a hundred other hues, shades you’d never imagine if you never saw them, and if you peer out from a spaceship it’s black as black can be. It may well be a mantra, if you look at it right—there is no one color of the sky, not really, not across the galaxy, not until night falls and darkness engulfs every world in turn.)

“No, just a game,” Qui-Gon tells her. “Nothing important.” The girl nods, crosses her arms, and trails along behind him. 

—————

(There is a stranger in the Temple, or maybe two. There’s a tall human man whom many of the younglings don’t know and an alien girl with bloodshot eyes, and they feel all strange and smell of dust and ship engines and something that can’t be washed off. Time flows quickly, really — the younglings who most clearly remember Master Jinn are for the most part young apprentices now, and the padawans are out afield with their masters, trying in vain to stave off the coming chaos. Little Ahsoka Tano, seven, sharp-toothed, and bold, takes her crèchemates’ questions to what is surely a practiced source on the _strange_ , the not-a-knight zabrak who has become equal parts teacher, fixture, and bogeyman of the Temple. Maul answers questions when they are asked, and if sometimes he needs to use smaller words that’s still better than suggesting someone go meditate on it. He’s reading again, so Soka clambers onto the table and perches there to better look him in the face. 

“Yes?” he asks, not looking up. His face is marked up, not like the other zabraks in the Temple — more like Soka herself and her fellow togruta, only black instead of white. The designs are pretty and symmetrical. 

“There’s a weird guy who came today,” she says. The zabrak frowns. 

“… You mean Master Jinn?”

“Maybe?” Soka chews her lip. “He’s tall, and he brought some girl. A padawan.” There is a click as Maul sets his datapad down and fixes her with a yellow stare. 

“A _padawan_?” he repeats. Soka nods. 

“She’s weird too.” Now she’s got Maul’s full attention. It’s not very comfortable, but she sticks out her chin and stares back. He doesn’t scare her.

“How so?” he presses. “That is, can you identify something similar?”

“Weird like… weird like _you_ ,” she says finally. “You know? You’re weird and they’re weird like you. Do you know why they’re here?”

“I would imagine it is because Master Jinn _lives_ here,” he says dryly. “He _is_ a Jedi.”

“Oh. I thought he quit, like that senator.” She doesn’t know much about Dooku, but she does know he’d quit being a Jedi and that that’s something people _can_ do. She’d rather assumed any other missing master had done the same. “Guess not?”

“He merely left,” says Maul. “Tell me of the padawan.” There isn’t much to tell, so Soka shrugs. 

“A padawan, I dunno. She’s not got hair, and her eyes are … weird.” They’re a light blue, but besides that they’re wrong somehow that Soka can’t quite explain. “Like yours. But a different color.”

“I see.” Maul doesn’t smile, but she can sense his curiosity. That’s one of the emotions he projects—curiosity, amusement, approval when something’s done well. All the rest are like he swallowed them. She kind of thinks it must hurt his stomach. “Can you take me to them? I’d like to see for myself, so I can answer properly.”

It seems like a reasonable request — there’s some sort of rule about only accepting _reasonable_ requests from Maul, she’s not sure who put it in place — so she agrees and leads him from the Archives by the sleeve of his neat black robes. They’re in the style worn by mirialan knights, like what Bariss will wear when she’s older.)

——————

It’s hard not to think of the room as Obi-Wan’s still, especially since Asajj has so few things to fill it with. No matter. For now, Qui-Gon sets about the complex task of retrieving his plants from their new owners — of course it was folly to assume they’d be right where he left them and completely unchanged when he’d been gone for years. (It was indeed. More foolish still to not realize some of them had been covertly rescued from his growing neglect well before then. Many will not be returned, especially not those that have taken up residence in Bant Eerin’s chambers.) Without Asajj at his heels and with a spare cloak on, the stares are less pronounced — Qui-Gon, at least, is visibly a Jedi and clearly knows where he’s going. Plo Koon gives him a polite hello in passing, Nara Unduli briefly looks puzzled but offers up a quick welcome back, and then Qui-Gon rounds a corner to see Maul getting dragged along by a tiny togruta. The Sith apprentice makes a short bow.

“Good afternoon, Master Jinn. It appears your travels were successful.” Well, now _that_ is a change. If the monster remains beneath the student’s façade, it’s well-hidden. 

“It appears your training has been as well,” Qui-Gon observes. There’s a flash of teeth between Maul’s tattooed lips. It’s actually a close approximation of a smile, however brief. 

“I still have much to learn, Master, as I am sure you have much to teach. You have taken another padawan.”

“Yes.” Qui-Gon tells him the abbreviated, sanitized version — Ky Narec, lost and then dead, and his own arrival on Rattatak to find Ky’s padawan lost and suffering. Maul nods slowly.

“And now she’s _your_ padawan?” the togruta child asks. “Is that allowed?”

“Of course. If someone loses their master, their training must still be completed,” Qui-Gon explains. “I am merely stepping in on Ky’s behalf—and in Asajj’s interest.”

“She will surely find Coruscant a change of pace,” says Maul in a tone that borders on diplomatic. (He has never seen Rattatak, but he can make an accurate guess about places at the edge of the galaxy.) 

“A pleasant one, I hope,” says Qui-Gon, and bids Maul and his tiny companion farewell. 

——————

(Asajj sits on the bed with her knees against her chest. This planet is _loud_ , loud like nothing she’s ever heard before, and she can feel the stares and silent judgement through solid walls. These people here are _real_ Jedi, proper Jedi, not monsters like her or halfway-outlaws like Master Narec and Master Jinn. She’s not stupid, after all, she knows Master Narec wouldn’t have been on Rattatak serving the Republic, and she can see the way people look at Master Jinn. And how they look at her, of course, as if they can see the blood dripping from her hands and her mouth—perhaps they do, perhaps Master Jinn does, perhaps he wants a tsic-soo on a leash to frighten his enemies and perhaps that’s all she’ll ever be. 

The knock on the door makes her flinch, and she edges toward it as if she expects an attack. That’s silly. Jedi don’t do that. She’s been taught Jedi don’t do that. 

“You can’t just walk in,” a young girl is saying. “That’s _rude_.”

“It is plausible she will not open the door.” That’s a man’s voice, low and deep with an accent she’s rapidly coming to recognize as Coruscanti. 

“Why?” asks the girl. 

“Jinn said she had been hurt,” he replies. “She may expect to be hurt again.”

“Oh,” says the girl. “I’m gonna knock again.” Asajj opens the door a crack before she can suit action to word, and peers out, tense and wary. The child looks up at her and breaks into a sharp-toothed grin and says hello, but Asajj hardly notices, startled gaze riveted on the figure behind her. 

He looks like a half-forgotten memory, a ghost of a place that may not have existed, sharp horns and a tattooed face and eyes that she knows will reflect moonlight. In those childhood half-dreams the tattooed men had been towering and animalistic, but this one is dressed mostly like a Jedi and regards her with a clear and intelligent — if surprised — stare. For a moment, it feels like the galaxy stops.)


	40. Chapter 40

(The young man, the _nightbrother_ finds his tongue before Asajj does and asks her name. It takes her a few attempts to reply, which makes the togruta child giggle. Asajj had met togrutas before, a set of slave brothers on Rattatak who had spoken in an odd, trilling language she’d only half been able to hear and had patted her gently on the head and called her _sweet cub_ after she and Master Narec had managed to communicate to them that they were free. When she replies, Asajj is painfully aware of how odd she sounds, of the rasp of her voice and the strangeness — here — of her accent. It doesn’t seem to trouble the nightbrother or his little companion. 

“A-are you a Jedi?” she asks. He’s dressed like one, but Jedi carry their lightsabers even within the Temple— she knows, she’s always hyperaware of weapons, now. Apprentices wear braids, or equivalents thereof, and Jedi go armed, and this nightbrother does neither. A flash of amusement passes over his face, quickly tamped down. Not quickly enough, though—Master Jinn may feel _strange_ for a Jedi, but the nightbrother smiles like an open wound, like that darkness Asajj is far too familiar with. 

“No,” he says. “I am no Jedi. Like you, though, I am here at Master Jinn’s behest. I am called Maul. This—“

“I’m Soka!” the child announces, cheerful. “Nice to meet you!” The nightbrother, Maul, seems mildly annoyed by the interruption.

“Um. Hello,” Asajj murmurs. She’s forgotten the norms of speaking to people like this, if she’d ever known them. Soka grins brightly and bounces on her toes as if she doesn’t care. Maul waves a gloved hand as if dismissing the interaction entirely. 

“… I wished to ascertain whether Jinn provided you with… _anything_ , prior to departing just now,” says Maul. Asajj pulls the outsized cloak tighter around her shoulders. It is the only thing Jinn has handed her, and it and her ragged clothes are the only things she has. The nightbrother's look of exasperation is exaggerated, but the sentiment underneath it is true. “As I had suspected. Come with me.” He pauses, then lays a gloved hand over the lapels of his robes, almost self-conscious. “Master Shaak Ti says that presentation is a key part of a Jedi’s existence.”

“So’s lunch,” says Soka, and Maul blinks.

“We are fed here,” he concedes, which may well be an invitation. After a moment’s hesitation, Asajj hikes up the edge of the cloak and hastens over the threshold to join them. Soka latches cheerfully onto her arm and asks questions Asajj doesn’t know how to answer— _what’s your homeworld, where’d you come from, how did the old man find you, what’s on your face, why are you scared, why are you angry_ , all asked with equal weight and curiosity. She’d asked the same things of her own master, years ago, a life ago. _Why are you here, where did you come from, why do you like how you look, what do you want?_ )

—————

When Qui-Gon returns to his quarters, having retrieved exactly zero of his plants and having gotten an icily polite lecture on caring for the living by Eerin, he finds his door ajar and his new apprentice missing. It is briefly a confusing situation before he remembers Maul’s newfound and Jedi-like propriety, which now that he thinks about it was almost certainly intended to cover something up — _like making off with the next darksider that Qui-Gon had dragged to the Temple against everyone’s better judgement, for instance_ points out a voice in the back of Qui-Gon’s mind that sometimes sounds like a much younger Mace Windu. 

Luckily enough, Maul seems lacking in grand Sithly ambition, so Qui-Gon finds his charge warily having lunch with Knight Unduli, who is recounting her latest mission while inhaling an entire plate of bean buns, and a lanky boy it takes entirely too long to recognize as Anakin. (This is payment, of a sort, for being subject to roughly two hours of nonstop interrogation by Maul, who is practicing both his diplomacy and his mindtricks, and Ahsoka, who understands neither quite yet but has a child’s talent at asking cutting questions.) They look and feel and _seem_ , all three of them, quite ordinary in that moment, as if there was never anything about them that set them apart from anyone else in the Temple or anyone else in the galaxy. That thought makes his blood run cold, and the next one is little better: was this the doing of the Temple, was this the culmination of the lessons of the Jedi?

(It is, it is, and it isn’t meant cruelly. Here at the Temple children aren’t chosen ones or children of counts or missing princesses, they aren’t meant for grand high destinies beyond those of their fellows, they are not aliens or foreigners regardless of whence they came: first and foremost, they are of the Temple, they are and will be Jedi. It is meant to temper arrogance and free them from the shackles of assumptions of destiny — the princess may grow to be a champion duelist, the child of a farmer may grow to be a diplomat know throughout the noble houses of the galaxy, a horrifying face may hide a gentle healer, and on the other hand any one of them could just be an ordinary person, a Jedi among Jedi, one of many who carry out lives of middling significance, and in the end they are one in the Force.

They are not the Sith, they do not kill the past self, but they let water flow and they know how it flows. Any child wishes to be special, but that same child wishes for friends who can understand him — Anakin was brought to the Temple slightly too late to have the latter in full, but between his master’s gentle prompting and watching Maul fall in with the knights in his own way, he can get the better part of it. Anakin’s power is still the stuff of supernovae, but what he wishes to be right now is a _Jedi_ , like his peers and like Master Plo, and most of the time he thinks this is an attainable goal. Even in peacetime, of course, Anakin would not become just a face in the crowd, he’s far too brash and far too, yes, _important_ for that, but a reality where an Anakin Skywalker lives out his life as a slightly headstrong but well-respected Jedi — padawan, then knight, then master — is not so far removed from this one, nor is it a tragic tale. It’s a story told often, in fact, and one the Jedi cherish: _I was lost, but then I found my people, and now I am home_. In the strange newcomer he sees something not unlike himself, a slave girl turned padawan, brought to the Temple by Master Jinn’s whims as much as by those of the Force — only somewhere along the path Asajj had turned to something Anakin doesn’t quite dare admit he understands. A Jedi doesn't seek vengeance, a Jedi has no attachments, and yet they had not turned Asajj away at the gates. 

Some cannot accept this. For some people, any hint of common ground or similarity in goals or experiences is an offense to their individual value. Say _I am a person, I am not lesser_ and more or less the Jedi are with you, but it is a shockingly close step to _only I am a person, I am greater, these are lesser_. It is perhaps a flaw in the code of the Jedi that they would strike down the former statement in an effort to strike down the latter, or perhaps a flaw that they are so wholly unsuccessful. Enough Jedi have raised themselves above their fellows, proud of their skills and of their wisdoms, proud of their origins or their destinies, dreaming not of being a grain of sand that tips the scale but the hand that drags it down — Dooku and Xanatos and Qui-Gon among them, yes, but plenty of others who have yet to dabble in darker things beyond their arrogant philosophy.) 

Today Anakin is a bright light among many, and Asajj is a quiet teenager in secondhand robes, and the sight turns Qui-Gon’s stomach because they are meant to be more than that, they are meant to tip scales or alter them entirely, not be ordinary people. (It doesn’t occur to him, of course, that perhaps a future General Skywalker could tip the scale one way, while a future Chosen One could tip the scales quite another, nor that one more Jedi knight and one fewer Sith acolytes is quite a scale of change itself.) He has to intercede. 

“Master Jinn!” Anakin is the first to spot him and leaps to his feet, nearly upsetting the bench. (He’s all legs and elbows at the moment, that weird intermediary state of human development that would make anyone seem less than Chosen.) “Heard you were back! How was… stuff?” 

“Educational,” says Qui-Gon. It’s clearly the wrong answer, because all interest drains from Anakin’s expression. Unduli’s lip twitches. 

“Have a bean bun, Master Jinn,” she says, then pointedly moves the plate out of his reach and toward Asajj. It’s a familiar move, one used on younglings, and he knows he’s supposed to wait his turn — and Asajj is supposed to pass him the plate. Instead, she freezes up, lost in a game she clearly doesn’t know how to play. 

“Thanks,” says Qui-Gon with his brightest smile, then plucks a bun off of the plate, informs Asajj she is to join him for training once she has eaten, and sweeps away, ignoring three sets of eyes fixed on the back of his head: Unduli glaring, Asajj baffled, and Anakin entertained. Small victories. 

———————

He has taught half-trained students before. Asajj has little in common with Feemor, who surely could never act in vengeance, but the point is the same — one builds upon a foundation already in place. Ky Narec had taught more combat than philosophy, which is well enough since Qui-Gon prefers the latter, so they sooner rather than later find themselves in the garden. Asajj still seems startled by the blue of the sky or the feel of grass, and instead of sitting to meditate drops flat on her back to look up at circling birds. 

She has been taught little of the Living Force, and her turn as a tsic-soo (what a term! it sounds absurd within the Temple’s walls) has left her connection to it tattered, but she wants to learn. 

“The Force flows through all things. Meditating in the presence of the Force in other forms allows one to form a deeper understanding of it,” he tells her, and the words flow more easily the second time. 

“Do you think I _can_ understand it?” Asajj asks. She looks pallid and deathly in the lush green of the grass, but Qui-Gon has seen death walking and knows this isn't it. She is nothing like Komari Vosa, who has embraced the madness of the Dark Side, nor is she like the Bando Gora. (For all her viciousness and capacity for cruelty, it would take an outside force to make Asajj Ventress think she is the _greater than_. Perhaps the love of a teacher who would raise her above others, or perhaps something like the visions and memories of torture that plague Vosa’s broken mind.)

“Of course,” Qui-Gon says. “I knew you could from the moment I saw you. Now, the Living Force surrounds us. Find it, reach for it.” 

The girl complies, and he watches her tense shoulders go slack as she relaxes. Here, green things grow, plants thrive for generations on end, the air is the cleanest anywhere on the planet and the distant birdsong is like a tiny symphony. Here is the heart of the Temple, here its denizens are safe — with a jolt of terror so intense Qui-Gon can nearly _taste_ it through the bond, the girl returns to herself, lurching to her feet and reeling away. Qui-Gon hastens to his feet as well and extends a comforting hand. 

“Padawan?” he asks. “What’s the matter?” Asajj’s lips move wordlessly for a moment, then she shakes her head and stumbles further away from him, managing a few disjointed-sounding syllables in a language he doesn’t know. 

“What—“ She shakes her head again, as if to clear it. “A— a vision.”

“What did you see?” He presses on the bond, but it’s still too new and raw to use like this. “Breathe, child. Tell me what you saw.” She shudders, and not for the first time looks very young. 

“A door,” she says. “A door among the stars. And the _cold_ —“

Oh, he could laugh. He won’t, because his apprentice’s fear is quite real, but he could laugh. A door among the stars, a gateway to the place of the truth of the Force—merely a rumor, for the past few years, a ghost story he’d done all he could to hunt down. And for what? Anakin, he knows, would be the key to the damned thing, but that’s of no use if it can’t be _found_.

“What did it look like,” he says instead.

“Red,” the girl says, and gestures a vaguely octahedral shape. “Lit up in red and with… gold and black, like threads or engravings. It bent the stars, and what was behind it…”

“Yes, did you see?” 

“It was cold. I think I saw it empty.”


	41. Chapter 41

(When he’d been new to the Temple, Master Plo had sat Anakin down and given him a very long-winded lesson about dead languages and the drift of words through cultures. Anakin hadn’t understood at the time, of course, he’d been very young and a bit overwhelmed and rather angry on some level. The strange Jedi’s words had stuck, though, even once he’d gone from _strange_ to known and admired. _Padawan_ , he’d said, was a word from a language no longer used, meaning some combination of a student, apprentice, and acolyte in a faith. There had been other words, filtered through archaic forms of Basic, that had come with it but slowly faded into translation — a term for an expert in an art or a form, a term for a career teacher, a formal term of address for a mentor, a term for a leader of a religious organization. Master Plo knew them all, and if asked could recite them, all these things the Jedi were before Ruusan and the great standardization. That’s not the real term, he knows, but Master Plo says it that way with the weary mockery of an outsider so that’s how Anakin always thinks of it. The kel dor have had their own ways of the Force long before they met any Jedi, and that lets Master Plo steeple his claws and look _down_ , in a way, at the current ways of things. 

Anakin is older now, and the word _master_ rolls more easily off his tongue when he’s thinking of mastery of a skill than when he thinks of the slaves of Tatooine. These older Jedi, Master Plo and the other, have indeed mastered things, and in time Anakin is sure he will master them too — because, well, that is what an apprentice, a padawan is to do. If he dreams of power, if he dreams of being the greatest _master_ the Temple has seen, if he dreams of being renowned throughout the galaxy, these are the dreams of a young boy who wants to better himself. Ambition is not a wicked thing — it is not wicked to want to be better than you are, or better than your surroundings, or better than your past. Ambition can move people to do great things, to stand against their worst fears, to rise up against tyrants, to end wars, to save planets, all these things can come of the thought _I can and I will_. Of course, it is so often ambition that drive the tyrants too, and starts wars, and kills. In that sense, it much like the Force. 

Once upon a time, long ago, the Revanchist was a hero of the people. Once upon a time, long ago, Darth Revan plunged the galaxy into ruin. Both of these statements are true. You could ask what Revan would have been in peacetime, but that’s not quite the right question. She didn't live in peacetime. You could ask, and many have, _how could we have stopped her fall_ , but there are no answers there, only theories, because she fell and she burned and the galaxy burned with her. 

Anakin knows this story, not in any formal way, but because it is passed along amongst apprentices as a thing one knows, a part of the shared-culture of the Jedi themselves. He has sat up and listened, among a dozen other children, as an older padawan recited the legend — the first time it had been Aayla, sitting on her knees with her lekku tied back, telling a tale of a monster who had once been a girl and a girl who would become a monster and the saving grace within the Force that is _choice_. That lesson had stuck too, the idea that here what he is will hinge upon what he does with the freedom he has won.

Master Plo is a good teacher, and Anakin learns that he is used enough to breaching gulfs of understanding. He explains in the same way that the kel dor do not breathe oxygen as he explains Jedi rules that an apprentice should probably already know, and then he takes Anakin flying and shows him how the Force can make a strarfighter even faster and more agile. He doesn’t expect Anakin to forget Tatooine, and when Anakin asks why he says it’s because he can’t not wear his goggles and breath mask. Eventually, slowly, Anakin works out what he means by that. It’s not a koan, like it had first seemed, but a statement of fact: Master Plo has lived the majority of his life on Coruscant, and through his long training has become a very good Jedi, but that doesn’t mean he will be ever able to breathe Coruscant’s air or be a human, and in the same way Anakin’s training will never erase who and what he has been or where he has come from and that’s perfectly fine. 

It is a good foundation, one Master Plo has gone to great lengths to set in place. Upon it, he hopes, the philosophy of the Jedi can grow and Anakin can turn from a child of unbridled power to a man who can wield that power for the good of all. He is an old idealist, after all, and can’t bring himself to fear the burning nova of a thing one can sometimes glimpse within Anakin. Apart, it might be frightening or it might not, but as it is it is only a facet of a young child.

So, then, Anakin grows up in the Temple, an outsider in many ways but a padawan among padawans in many others, and when he meets Asajj he thinks, though perhaps in not so many words, about paths not taken and teachers not had. He makes it to _I’ve been lucky, I’m lucky here, the Force is with me_ , but he doesn’t make it to mercy. At his age, perhaps he should, or perhaps he has every excuse not to. 

In any case, they find common ground enough to talk around the concept of slavery and compare fundamentally strange stories about Master Jinn and his antics. He introduces her to Knight Kenobi, polite and stone-faced, on one of the days when the young man — Anakin thinks he should maybe call him Obi-Wan, but then he looks into that expressionless face and doesn’t dare — is around and Master Jinn isn’t. He hopes for _something_ in the interaction, because Master Jinn did train Knight Kenobi and at least back on Tatooine and Naboo they’d seemed genuinely close, but Kenobi just offers the girl a polite smile and his best wishes.

“It makes her your sister, you know,” Anakin says bluntly, because he’s quick to learn to use a saber but slow to learn subtlety. “You should be nicer.” Asajj flinches beside him and shakes her head. 

“No — no it is not the case,” she says quickly. Kenobi’s blank smile twitches into something more sardonic. 

“Do forgive me,” he says. “Our lineage is hardly a highlight of the Jedi Order as it now stands, but I am certain you will do well. In any case, it is unlikely you will be the worst of us.”

“The worst of us?” Asajj echoes, her forehead creasing with confusion. Kenobi chuckles. It’s so bitter Anakin can practically taste it. 

“Of course he wouldn’t tell you,” he says, then catches himself. When he opens his mouth again he sounds all Jedi and polite. “The whole matter is a bit complicated. Come, walk with me.” 

So they follow and listen as he unravels the whole complicated story for them, Dooku and Vosa and Master Jinn and Xanatos and the Sith and the Bando Gora. He tells it like he is an outside observer, like a Jedi should, even the bits where he gets tortured or nearly killed. By the end, he seems unfazed and Asajj is biting down on thoughts of vengeance. Anakin shoots a quick glance her way and nearly stumbles at the vision of the girl stained up to her elbows with blood, grinning like a nightmare as she raises something to her red-smeared lips—he blinks, and the vision is gone, she has her hand covering her mouth, that’s all, and when she draws it away what comes out is a murmured and sincere apology, not the ferocious hiss he rather thinks the vision would have. Kenobi blinks at her.

“You are hardly to blame for their actions,” he says mildly, “Save your apologies for your own.”

“That is…” Asajj begins, and for the first time in a long time Anakin sees Kenobi’s expression warm incrementally. 

“Difficult?” he suggests. The warmth vanishes. “Yes, it is. Certainly more difficult than feeling bad for things that occurred before you were born or when you were worlds away, and yet a Jedi must do it regardless.”

“So what are we _supposed_ to say?” asks Anakin, in what he hopes is the tone of a dutiful apprentice rather than a whiny child who hasn’t yet learned his supposed-tos. Kenobi looks like he wants to sigh. 

“Saying anything is besides the point. I told you the truth of what happened, what you ought to do is use it — it is a way to know them and what they are capable of, if you meet them, or to perhaps more closely grasp your master’s —“ here a gesture in Asajj’s direction, “—motivations, or even Senator Dooku’s. _Know yourself first, and know your enemy, and face your battles without fear._ ” Something in that rings wrong.

“Master Jinn and the senator aren’t our enemies, though,” says Anakin. “They’re the good guys.” A blank smile isn’t the reaction he wants.

“Of course,” says Kenobi, and then he tells them he has work to do.)

——————

The next Qui-Gon sees Anakin, in between missions so back-to-back it almost feels like someone is trying to keep him busy, the boy pleads with him to go back to Tatooine and attend his mother’s wedding. It’s a petty, boring thing and Qui-Gon is almost relieved to have an excuse to avoid it. He remembers Shmi Skywalker, of course, she’d been sharper than the rest of the locals and fairly cooperative, but the coldest part of his mind says she’s served her purpose and the rest just doesn’t care. 

It’s strange, in a sense, there are so many important things to be done — Xanatos is still at large, having evaded capture for years, and while the Bando Gora seem unlikely to storm the Jedi Temple again they’re no less active, and the Sith Darth Sidious looms over this all — and yet so much of what the Jedi are sent to do is petty, simple tasks the coming war will surely render pointless in due time. How many times can rebels be negotiated with, how many illicit trade schemes can be interrupted, how many alliances can be settled before they realize it all means nothing?

(It doesn’t mean nothing. The presence or absence of a nail can change history, they say, and the Republic and the Jedi are seeking to limit coming disaster. But limits and lessening are boring to some and, in truth, sometimes fall far short of their goals.)

When yet another rebellion rises in the Outer Rim, this one on Anoo, Qui-Gon suspects the hand of the Sith — or at least the hand of Xanatos — so he volunteers himself and Asajj for the peacekeeping mission. With them goes Knight Tatchi, who is expected to be a good influence at least on Asajj. 

(The Sith do not dabble here, but they don’t need to. What has been begun has begun, and this rebellion is one of many, one of a wave. Anoo is a poor place for it though. It had been conquered once, long ago, and the Republic had done nothing for it then, yes, but the conquerers had settled and bargained and made their peace and the natives had never quite thought the Republic owed them time of day or vice versa, and in any case the man raising the flag of rebellion is an anoo-dat prime, some generations removed from the _conquerors_ , not the conquered. Still, a rebellion rises because people are angry and their leader is charismatic and the Republic, he thinks, will crumple like rotten wood if pressed.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Might've gotten slightly carried away there, but hey! Anakin! He and Plo get to do things in the next plot, so stay tuned!)


	42. Chapter 42

(The anoo-dat fled a dying planet, long ago, and they took to the stars as conquerors because otherwise they would be refugees. The galaxy, you see, is not kind to refugees, but history at times is kind to conquerors. It served them well, this cruelty of desperation, because now, when all is said and done and treaties are the way of things, they are the anoo-dat _prime_ , and the world upon which they settled has been renamed Anoo, and they are its masters. It could have been quite different, perhaps, things would have been quite different, had the anoo-dat come pleading to the ports of Gelefil and bowed their heads and taken local names. Or, perhaps, it would just be a matter of names and the result would smell the same: one planet, two peoples, and a cautious peace that has grown comfortable as time marched on. Before you judge the anoo-dat prime too harshly, because they are alien creatures with too many eyes and rows of teeth and claws that rend, turn your judgement to those who came in similar conquest from living places and only recently have settled into a coexistence. Naboo’s painted faces and white towers hide the same past, you see, and if among the anoo-dat prime there is a clever and brave young lady who sits among the ret to learn from them then she is as much and as little the child of conquerors and brutes as little Padmé Amidala.

There is such a girl, though some five years Padmé’s junior, and to her people she is just as pretty as Padmé is to human eyes. Her scales gleam almost golden in sunlight and her eyes are the deep crimson of the gemstones of old Anoo, and right now she is in hiding because a rogue general wants her family dead.

The general had miscalculated, however. They do not love the Republic here, because it’s difficult to love so faraway and foreign a power that claims dominion over the galaxy, but they love the chaos of revolution even less. Anoo doesn’t thrive, perhaps, but it advances in steady, even steps, and those who wish it and have the skills can win places in academies on Coruscant and scattered through the Mid Rim. If Republic-made school texts have, over generations, rendered Basic the local lingua Franca, what of it? Anoo’s scholars can and do write papers decrying the slow loss of their ancestral tongue, and sign off with their academic titles hard fought for and won in Republic universities, and then the papers join hundreds of others decrying the same loss across the galaxy. This is, unfortunately, the way of things here, and the denizens of Anoo by and large accept this. Perhaps they are fools to, perhaps they should strive to hold onto who they were and reject the imposition of someone else’s standards. Perhaps they are wise to, perhaps they know when they teach their children Basic first and Dat-an still-but-second and Tra'ang'a only sometimes that there is no bright future for those who cannot make themselves understood beyond their own borders. Perhaps it’s both, because people are complicated.

In any case, this is a local revolt and it is ultimately likely to fail, but the Republic is wary of local revolts and the Jedi suspect the hand of the Sith in each one, so to Anoo the Jedi go. Of course they do, it’s their duty to do such things and if they didn’t it would be said they had abandoned Anoo as the Republic has so many Outer Rim worlds, and were it to succeed the consequences would be dire indeed. But if Ashaar Khorda’s schemes had been crushed by his own people, that would have been the end of him — he would have, perhaps, fled and haunted the galaxy as one of many bounty hunters, or sold his services to another group of rebels, or crossed the gazes of the Sith and become a pawn in their games, yes, but in any of those capacities he would have been a footnote.)

—————

Anoo is an agrarian world —one of those places where fields of grain can stretch as far as the eye can see and exports of produce and foodstuffs fuel not just its economy but that of the entire sector. While Qui-Gon has never set foot upon it, he had traveled to Sedri as a young man and seen, on half-aquatic landing platforms, deliveries from nearby Anoo unloaded by reptilian creatures so densely built that the platforms tilted when they moved and had seen holofootage of the farms in some extremely dry discussion about soil remineralization. Even from above, however, he can see that many Anoo’s fields have been put to the torch. 

“That… looks bad,” says Asajj, at his elbow. She hasn’t seen many planets — Rattatak, certainly, Coruscant and perhaps its neighbors in passing, she claims to have no memory of a homeworld and Qui-Gon can’t sense much of a lie there. “Have we come too late?”

“Probably,” he says without thinking. “But unless a crisis is foreseen, we are always too late.” 

“When do people foresee them, then?” she asks. 

“When the Force wills it,” Qui-Gon answers. Bound and dependent as they are to the whims of the Force, the Jedi can only _react_ , and he can bear it less and less. It would be for the good if they (and what a nebulous _they_ this is) could wrest the Force’s secrets from it, after all, they could save lives, prevent wars, stop potential enemies before they had a chance to act. They could have felled Sidious or his predecessors decades ago, he thinks, and stopped Xanatos’s fall and never taken in Komari Vosa and saved Ky Narec and swept Asajj and Anakin to the Temple as infants, but instead they are here, looking over burning fields and wondering what there is to be done and the war has not even started yet. His frustration must be palpable, because Asajj shoots a wary glance up at him and shifts away. “We are here now, regardless,” he says. “So we must do what we can.”

—————

They spend a week in the thoroughly undignified task of chasing rebels. The lines are clearly drawn here, there is no mystery about who commands them, and a significant fraction are offworlder mercenaries of various sorts. Some of them want specific things — power for themselves, some idealistic balderdash about reinstatements of sovereignty apart from the Republic, the removal of some local official Qui-Gon could care less about — but rather more of them are in it to see Anoo burn. 

(Sometimes people crave destruction and chaos. Perhaps they think something better will rise from the ashes, perhaps they think nothing should rise at all, but in any case they hunger for it. People can hunger all they want, they often have no chance to act on it, but the Force touches all living things. The Dark Side grows stronger with each passing day, and where once Khorda may have complained and schemed in secrecy and come to naught he grows bolder and more furious and finds, instead of vague dissent, those willing to take up arms.) 

Among the anoo-dat blue, Khorda has found little support and many of his enemies have found sanctuary. The blue cannot put up much of a fight, but they make a show of a united front, refusing Qui-Gon access to those whom they hide. (They don’t call themselves the blue, only outsiders call them that. The old-fashioned ones say they are the ret, while the younger ones are anoo-dat like their neighbors. It’s one of the many reasons they are leery of Qui-Gon, one of the many reasons why Obi-Wan was a blessing from the Force for him — the boy had always _asked_ , you see, what people he was dealing with called themselves. It will serve him as well.) 

“We are trying to _help_!” Asajj snaps, interrupting Qui-Gon’s attempt to mindtrick his way past the blue guards. She’s angry, frustrated, too used to solving problems with a blade to be patient now even though she knows she should. “Why do you not let us?”

“If you wish to _help_ , Jedi, do what you were called to do,” one of the guards replies, arms crossed. “General Khorda has gone mad. Rid us of him, and leave these people in peace.”

“Or what?” Qui-Gon asks archly. 

“Or you will find your course of action a failure,” the blue replies coldly. It’s a bluff, Qui-Gon thinks, he can break the guard’s mind with a firm push, but there is little to be gained from calling it. Still— 

“Where do we _find_ Khorda, then?” Asajj asks. “Do you know that?”

The blue does not, but a question is clearly passed up the food chain and an answer is passed back down — Khorda’s location is unknown, but he means to sack the governing house at Tak’lika and claim it for his own, and would the Jedi be so cooperative as to intercept him before he does such a thing?

Good enough. Asajj is clearly itching for battle, for the chance to wield her old master’s blade for good again but also just to wield it in general, and Qui-Gon wants this _done_. This impatience is no virtue, he knows, but it is hard to sit and linger with the knowledge of impending potential doom and things that must be done about it hanging over his head. 

(They don’t go as Jedi, the two of them, not really. They go as mercenaries, hired blades of the Republic. That is how General Khorda and his rebels will see them, that is how they will be remembered — and the Republic, people will say, crushed Khorda’s revolt before it half began. It's true enough.) 

Asajj is the one who first spots Khorda’s army, in Qui-Gon’s opinion even more of a rabble than the Bando Gora. They scatter like a rabble too, when two cloaked figures with lightsabers fall upon them from above in the dark of night. There is no honor among this sort, Qui-Gon thinks, and this proves it. They have no fealty to their leader and he has no hold over them, and when Khorda is captured he is alone and wounded and palpably shocked. 

When he’s bound and arrested more or less properly, Qui-Gon asks him what he really expected. It’s a cruel jibe on his tongue, but at large Khorda had seemed a barbarian and captured he seems little more than an animal. The anoo-dat glowers back at him but doesn’t reply, which doesn’t exactly change Qui-Gon’s view. 

——————

He curses himself and his arrogance and folly two days later, as Khorda’s crimes are being tallied and his enemies reemerge into the light under the official protection of the Republic, because the so-called barbarian manages an escape from a high-security cell with the aid of some of his true believers and a handful of mercenaries and flees offworld. Qui-Gon gives chase, of course, but he’s a poor pilot compared to some and the Force, it appears, is with Khorda this time — or perhaps the Dark Side is. In any case, the rogue general sends a message, taunting and laughing: _I expected soldiers with blasters, true, but you are pets of the corrupt, bloated creature that is the so-called Republic nonetheless. I have seen your true faces, and my goal is renewed. Death to the Republic! And eternal suffering onto you._


	43. Chapter 43

“Khorda is gone,” Qui-Gon says, standing in the council hall. He can’t quite wrap his mouth around the phrase _he escaped_ and he doesn’t want to. Away from Anoo, the rogue general can hardly carry on his revolt, right? 

“We chased him,” says Asajj, who apparently has grasped neither the fact that padawans should wait their turn to speak nor that Qui-Gon wants to avoid the sordid details. “But he got on a flying— on a _starfighter_ and whoever was flying it flew better than me.” Windu’s eyes narrow in the split second pause before the girl continues. “And he escaped Master Jinn somehow too.”

“How is your flying, padawan?” Windu asks abruptly. Asajj crosses her arms and stares at her feet, radiating discomfort. (Of course she’s never been taught. Where would she be? On Rattatak, where only pirates break atmosphere with any regularity? Or at Qui-Gon’s side when he flies blind? The Force is not the be-all, end-all of these things. The Force allows her to look at an utterly piece of technology and find it similar to something familiar, it lets her learn quickly, it lets her shut her eyes and _guess_ which button does what and how to take flight while Qui-Gon lags behind her somewhere and be correct—much like it allowed Anakin to take a best guess at flying a Naboo fighter based on his podracing skills and shoot down a command ship like he’d shoot womp rats. The difference, of course, is that Anakin had flown before, while Asajj, for the most part, had prowled Rattatak on foot. Good luck can’t save you from a lack of knowledge — know not your enemy and know not yourself, and you have lost before you began.)

“I— I learned to use a speeder. Fighters are not so different.” She says it defiantly, as willing to admit weakness as Qui-Gon is to admit failure, and he almost grins at her. A Jedi doesn’t—oughtn’t lie, but telling the truth is a spectrum. 

“Of course,” says Windu. He doesn’t frown quite as much as Qui-Gon expects him too. “Though you should refine your skills before your next such engagement. Perhaps Master Plo Koon can give you some advice on the topic.” This is many a Jedi’s preferred form of combat, the careful mahashi of words — admit nothing, demand nothing, let other people have your way then step back with a bow. 

“Anakin’s master?” the girl asks, and Windu gives a nod. “I can ask him about… about combatting evasive maneuvers by opponents in flightcraft.” That last part is rattled off with what sounds rather like an attempt at mimicking a Coruscanti accent (Obi-Wan’s? Maul’s? Qui-Gon can’t be sure.), but Windu’s lip twitches vaguely upward for a split second. 

(This is familiar to him, after all. He has seen enough padawans trying desperately to be Jedi _correctly_ and stumbling on their own weaknesses and misgivings and insecurities. He remembers _being_ one of those padawans, even — his nigh-perfect control now was born of years of struggling and learning and stonewalling and lashing out until he found a path he could tread for himself, and he, like Asajj, had spent the greater part of those years unaware of whence he had come. Learning of his homeworld, seeing it for the first time, that had brought a sense of unexpected closure: _this is what I was, where I came from_ , he had thought, and then — _and a Jedi is what I am now_. Perhaps the clue to Asajj’s origins is somewhere in the Archives. He’ll make sure it is looked for.)

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” he says. “I believe he and Anakin are in Temple today. I have a few more questions for your master, but your report has been quite sufficient.”

The girl hesitates a moment, glances sideways at Qui-Gon, and he is sorely tempted to order her to stay, just _because_. On the other hand, he wants as few witnesses to the upcoming lecture as possible, so he nods encouragingly. Asajj nods back, bobs a quick bow towards Windu and the other council members, then bolts for the door with all the grace of a young animal still growing into its limbs. A few amused, vaguely fond glances follow her, and then the door shuts and all eyes fix on Qui-Gon. 

“How,” asks Windu, stormy-faced, “did you manage to _lose_ a rebel leader?”

How indeed. 

—————

(It goes without saying, of course, that this is not the last anyone will hear of Ashaar Khorda. He and his most loyal allies, the ones that fight for him and not against some petty noble of Anoo, have regrouped after their flight and now turn their gazes outward. Anoo was too small a target, after all, too provincial — enough to draw the ire of the corrupt Republic and the Jedi, but not enough to damage them. No, to truly strike back they would have to strike at one of the Republic’s hearts — Coruscant, the capital, Corellia, the ancient world, or Alderaan, the beacon — and they would need a weapon powerful enough to do it. 

There are whispers in the underworld about a woman prophet, some mad creature who speaks of world-destroyers and ancient weapons, of the mythical Star Forge and the rise of the Sith. Ashaar Khorda spits upon the Sith and their machinations. As far as he can tell, they are part and parcel of the Republic, a dark twin of it that is just as mired in filth and corruption. No, the mad prophet of the Bando Gora can keep her Sith Lords, but Khorda has long mused on the potential for weapons on a grand scale. 

There will always be world destroyers, you see, world eaters. Some are old, ancient, the wicked legacies of bygone times and dead civilizations, but others are crafted by engineers who stand at the frontiers of science. Sometimes time passes and the latter become the former, relics of the Old Republic or of empires come and gone. These things come in cycles, Komari Vosa need not see the future to accurately guess this: another fall and rise is coming, and the rise of the new order, the new sky, will come with a weapon that can sacrifice worlds. It will not be Ashaar Khorda who wields it, in the end, because he has come some decades too early, but the Dark Side is rising and he might as well try. 

The weapon that falls under Khorda’s gaze is an old one, an artifact from the primitive planet of Seylott that was imbued long ago with great power — or perhaps built to hold it. Seylott, the legends say, had been a place of power once, empires and empires and republics and republics ago, when humans were a small race and the Infinite Empire held dominion over the stars. It’s a pleasing image to consider, briefly, but Khorda is not one for fairytales, and even if the legends were true the seylott are simple creatures now and the rakata are a ghost of a dream of something long dead. The weapon, the Infant of Shaa, is very much real, though, and the seylott have heretics amongst themselves. Three who have wandered far from home don’t dare return, but the fourth is bolder and demands a high price for her work. Khorda is willing to pay. What use is one ship more or less to him? If the seylott traitor wants to sail the stars herself she is welcome to it, as long as she delivers the weapon to him. 

It does not take the Force to sense the thing’s power. It burns to the touch, even inactive, and Khorda could laugh. Such an ancient thing, and yet weapon like nothing the modern era has seen. Just the thing to _euthanize_ the Republic with.) 

—————

Asajj goes to train with Plo, who is easily the best pilot amongst the Jedi masters, and either circumstances, the Force, or those very masters conspire to not let her in arm’s reach of Qui-Gon for the next six months. When next he sees her, after entirely too much time spent chasing Xanatos’s mercenaries around, she’s talking Maul’s ear off about Dathomir. Dathomir! Qui-Gon knows little of the place beyond that it’s the domain of _witches_ , petty users of a local Dark Side tradition that has for some reason not been stamped out. Dooku, he recalls vaguely, had spent a few months on the planet once on probably Temple-sanctioned business, and had returned looking like he’d not seen sunlight once the whole time and with a lock of his hair identifiably clipped off. 

“What’s all this?” Qui-Gon asks, and the girl excitedly tugs Maul’s arm. He looks unimpressed. 

“We are from the same planet!” she exclaims. “Maul and I — We both are Dathomiri!” 

“Allegedly,” Maul adds flatly.

“We could be—“ Asajj cuts herself off partway through a word that’s definitely not in Basic. “—kinspeople? We could be kinspeople. You could be my brother.”

“Or my family could have murdered yours and sold you into slavery,” says Maul. “Do not get ahead of yourself.” Asajj just sticks her tongue out at him. 

(He doesn’t know anything of Dathomir beyond what the Archive can teach. He doesn’t recognize the tune of the lullaby Asajj swears she heard her mother sing when she was a baby. He doesn’t remember thick vegetation and a red-tinted sky. He speaks Basic with a Coruscanti accent and knows the ancient tongue of Korriban and the True Sith as if it was his native one, and sometimes when he dreams himself he dreams his hands are peachy-fair like Lord Sidious’s and Master Jinn’s and Kenobi’s. Claiming a homeworld seems bizarre and false — the Sith are everywhere and nowhere and belong only to themselves, and Maul is… what, exactly? What is he, what was he, what will he become? The answers don’t come as easily as they once did, and part of his mind lingers where it shouldn’t. 

_You could be my brother_. He could, couldn't he? He has no way to prove the negative. He could, and then what would he be?)

———————

The clone army being built has a human father, a Mandalorian mercenary called Fett. Fett, it appears, has just done a bunk from Kamino, leaving his son(?), the program, and a hasty note about a girl, a lizard, and a bomb. All this takes place sort of at the edge of Qui-Gon’s awareness, up until an informant twigs to something in the note while being interrogated, several calls of various levels of subtlety are made, and some rather scattered-looking knight’s former something-or-other passes a recording of a meeting to Billaba, claiming that everyone else including a ‘bloody Mandalorian’ had gotten cold feet so he wasn’t about to tough it out. That would exist at the fringes of Qui-Gon’s awareness too, had one former general Ashaar Khorda not featured prominently in the recording pontificating at length about a plan to destroy the hearts of the Republic. That rather means it gets replayed two inches from Qui-Gon’s face while a vein pulses in Windu’s head. 

“It isn’t my fault,” Qui-Gon says firmly. 

“It isn’t a matter of faults,” says Windu. “But if we are on the topic it was your failure that allowed him to escape and raise this scheme. You will accompany Depa to Corellia in case this maniac intends to strike there, and you will do exactly as she tells you.” Qui-Gon remembers Billapa as a scruffy apprentice with permanently skinned knees, and wants to do anything but that, but Windu’s tone allows for no argument. 

“Do you think that is where he will strike?” he asks instead. Windu’s frown deepens. 

“No,” he admits. “I do not.”


	44. Chapter 44

Khorda, of course, does not attack Corellia. Qui-Gon passes an uncomfortable week getting lectured by Billaba and some expert on the local power grids and getting a running account of Asajj’s flying lessons, first with Plo Koon and then with a sympathetic member of the Judicial Guard. The locals are dubious and there is a legend of a breakaway sect of Jedi here, those who _took the green_ and forsook Coruscant and never looked back. Of course, no sign of them remains, but the locals bring it up anyway every time, it seems, someone says the word _Jedi_. 

“Humans, then?” Billaba asks lightly, after the fifth such reference. Corellia, after all, is mostly human. “The ones who took the green long ago?”

“Humans, yeah,” says their guide. “What else would they be?”

What else, indeed. Those so legendary always turn out to be human, it seems. There is no room for them to be anything else.

(Part of it is simple mathematics: there are more humans in the galaxy than any one other species, so of course there are more legendary humans than, say, zabraks or kaleesh. Another part of it, though, is a matter of provenance: of course humans tell tales of human heroes and human villains. Ask a twi’lek for tales from the Old Republic and you’ll hear quite a different set with quite a different cast, and so on and so forth the further afield you go. The late Hego Damask would tell you, perhaps, of the heroes of his own people: those who brought Muunilinst and its sector to prominence in bygone days and built up fiduciary institutions that would outlive empires and not only survive but profit from the turbulence wrought by those petty heroes and villains of whom human tales are told.

The Jedi, when they tell tales, speak of Jedi— or of officials, or of the fallen, or of soldiers and scoundrels but in any case they use _these_ titles and not others. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, nor with the fact that every apprentice fills in roles in these stories with familiar faces. They should know better, perhaps, than to assume all those past champions looked quite like them, but what else are they to assume? That these legends are about completely different people, people like whom they will never be? That is hardly fair either, is it? Enough of them will figure out that’s what the galaxy thinks of them anyway.)

Qui-Gon doesn’t tell the Corellians where to stuff their legends and he doesn’t tell Billaba where she can put her academic interest in them, but he does escape monitoring to watch and gamble on local speeder races and buys fifteen kinds of rare teas with his winnings. Billaba crossly tells him they’re on duty not on a vacation, and for a moment looks the image of her master as a young man despite being over a head shorter than him, Chalactan, and a woman with hair down to her waist. Qui-Gon laughs in her face and asks her if she's seen any terrorists yet. 

—————

Corellia shines on. No harm comes to Alderaan, again, though it is a fitting and striking target. (Always considered, never struck — that is how it has survived so long. Some would call that borrowed time, some would call it the protection of the Force.) At the end of the week, word comes from Coruscant of a plot foiled and a terrorist struck down and a handsome reward given to a pair of bounty hunters, a Mandalorian and a changeling girl, who had turned on their employer and helped bring him down. A second message closely follows that one, recalling Billaba and Qui-Gon post-haste because Khorda had killed a Jedi and grievously wounded another before being brought down at last. 

(That information is secret, or meat to be, because it frightens the Jedi. They do not _mean_ to raise themselves above the ordinary people, of course, but it is hard for them not to. Khorda had been, in their kindest assessment, a competent military man who had gone rogue, and in their cruelest assessment a rabid animal gunning for something far bigger than he was. Neither of those things, and nothing in between them, should have been able to strike down a Jedi — and yet, and yet. Bombs can kill Jedi, so can blasters and slugthrowers and vibroblades and a strong blow to a weak point with a heavy object. They can kill Sith Lords too, and so can a fishbone lodged in the throat and so can the void of space and so can drowning. The Force doesn’t grant immunity to death, just foresight and reflexes and weapons to fight back with or to stop a would-be assassin in their tracks, and those who forget that are likely to meet a sorry end. Those who believe that in all things come messages from the Force should read in Khodra’s attack a warning: succeed or fail, you are not immortal. They don’t, of course. That isn’t the sort of message people look for.) 

They arrive in time for Master Ploof’s pyre. The Mandalorian Fett cuts an odd figure amongst the Jedi in his painted armor, helmet tucked under his arm and a look of worry creasing his face. His changeling associate, Qui-Gon is told, has taken her reward and fled, but Fett has felt the need to stick around for whatever reason. 

(Jango Fett isn’t a cruel man or a particularly arbitrary one. He is, after a fashion, a criminal, but existing beyond the laws of the Republic doesn’t mean he exists beyond the laws of his industry or beyond any moral codes. He has stuck around to pay his respects, though he’d hardly met Ploof twice, because the old Jedi had gone down in the line of duty to protect people and that, to someone like Fett, is a fundamentally honorable act. 

“He died a defender,” Fett had told a Jedi with a reddish beard that failed to hide his young face. It sounds better in Mando’a, but he has grown quite used to translating every word of his speech. 

“He died a Jedi,” says the young man automatically, then switches quite unexpectedly to Fett’s native tongue. “We are supposed to be defenders. Such is our way.” His accent is good, clearly practiced, but Fett knows only one time a Jedi so young could have gone among the Mandalorians. 

“Defenders, usually, of what?” he asks dryly. The young Jedi meets his eyes calmly. 

“Of peace,” the young Jedi says, then switches back to Basic. “And of the Republic. Your service is appreciated.”) 

——————

Ploof is dead in the attack and Plo Koon, who had been meant to be his reinforcement, is wounded beyond what an ordinary person could think to recover from. Given that he is a Jedi, the healers tentatively expect him to wake after a few months in stasis and consider it plausible that he could recover use of most of his limbs after that. 

“What of his apprentice?” Qui-Gon asks before the healers manage to quite finish explaining that. “Anakin. Is he—?”

“He has been left in the care of Knight Kenobi,” the healer supplies quickly. “You needn’t worry. The poor lad was terrified at first, but he is recovering quickly. Children can.”

“Quite a relief,” says Billapa, then launches into a series of medical questions while Qui-Gon quietly fumes. 

Obi-Wan? They gave Anakin to _Obi-Wan_ now? Obi-Wan has never taught a student, Obi-Wan was a padawan himself so recently, Obi-Wan is somehow too careful and too mouthy and too immature and too bookish all at the same time — oh, Qui-Gon loves his former apprentice, he does, and he misses his calming presence at his side, but distance throws all of Obi-Wan’s little infuriating flaws into stark relief. The lad had needed _Maul_ and an apprentice to save his neck, for pity’s sake, and they were handing the Chosen One to him? It was as if they wanted Anakin’s potential lost— and what potential it was! 

No, no he wouldn’t allow it. He _couldn’t_ allow it! Obi-Wan would ruin everything, Obi-Wan would do the bidding of the council, Obi-Wan would play right into Sidious’s hands—

Ah, but Obi-Wan would _listen_ to _Qui-Gon_ , wouldn’t he? His former master whom he so admired and with whom he’d spent so much of his life. There was the path forward, then, so clear and simple. He’d just have to be _convinced_ , then Qui-Gon would have Anakin — and Asajj — and the door at the end of the galaxy — and the truth of the Force itself. 

(There’s just one error with that assessment, however. Qui-Gon has been gone for _years_ now, drifting through the galaxy’s edge and chasing the ghosts of the Sith. Things _change_ , given time and opportunity, people do too — he certainly has, in ways he cannot even pretend to deny. Obi-Wan has too, though perhaps in a different direction. Where once he had been an eager student, desperate for his master’s approval and for the chance to at last make himself worthy of a knighthood, he is now a colder, closed-off young man who knows full well he has gotten his title as consolation upon being cast aside. He stands at no one’s elbow now and strives not to impress any teacher or mentor or master but to carry on the duty he has been given, be it a mission or, as it is in this case, the temporary care of a frightened and furious apprentice. 

The Jedi forbid attachments, Obi-Wan knows, and attachment leads to fear leads to rage leads to the Dark Side, or at least to the bitter taste of bile on his tongue and an ache in his chest like his heart has been cut out. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, so there is no attachment, and there is no fear or loss or rage. There is only the peace of knowing that nothing is yours, nothing was and nothing will be. There is peace, there is knowledge, there is serenity, there is the Force. It’s all very simple and he’d been a fool to think otherwise.

Eerin worries for him, but such worries are improper. Obi-Wan, everyone says, has become an exemplary Jedi, and everyone can see he is quite successful. She worries in silence, and she is not the only one.)

——————

Obi-Wan smiles blankly, hears his old master out, and shuts the door in his face after telling him Anakin needs some peace and quiet. He is less polite to Vos when Qui-Gon sends him to plead his case, and Vos gleefully relays exact wording back before telling Qui-Gon he’d not expected much better. No one else Obi-Wan listens to is willing to help, and Obi-Wan seems to never let his charge out of his sight so it’s not like Qui-Gon can get to Anakin that way. Even Asajj gets politely shooed away, though she at least gets some vague instructions about makashi manuals for her troubles. 

Eventually Qui-Gon and Asajj get sent on a mission to a possibly diametrically opposite bit of the galaxy from where Obi-Wan and Anakin are going, and Qui-Gon is certain strings have been pulled to arrange that. Well, fine. He can pull strings with the best of them, he thinks, so he corners Maul in the Archive again. 

“Master Jinn?” the Sith apprentice asks. He sounds doubtful, though Qui-Gon can hardly guess of what. 

“Maul. How would you like a mission?” Silence greets this question. Maul stares warily at him, waiting for the caveat. “It wouldn’t be official,” Qui-Gon admits, “but there is something I need to take care of. If you could handle the mission that was assigned to me, I would make sure you get the credit after the fact.”

“Why?” 

“I already told you. There is something I need to do.” He can nearly hear the mental arithmetic taking place within Maul’s horned head, but it’s a matter of weighing his restlessness and hunger for action and approval against whatever loyalty to the Temple’s rules has been drilled into him over the years. An easy bet to make, after all — it’s a matter of seconds, not minutes, before the young zabrak nods.

“Tell me the mission,” he says. Qui-Gon grins. 

—————

There are more important things than the Temple or the Jedi code, so Qui-Gon lies as he goes. He lies to Asajj about a change of instructions, lies to the new junior archivist about what he’s doing in the vault, lies over the comm to Windu and jams the return signal, lies when he lands about whether Obi-Wan is a Jedi and whom the Temple sent — so very believable, really, when he looks nearly _venerable_ and talks like a mystic while Obi-Wan looks like a padawan in a fake beard if the light hits him wrong. (By then Asajj is balking, but her comm doesn’t work and she can hardly run from her own master.) The resulting melodrama lands Obi-Wan in a local prison and results in a minor riot, which serves Qui-Gon’s purpose well enough — while the locals try to straighten things out amongst themselves, he grabs Anakin and Asajj and flees for Wild Space. 

(Damask’s holocron is in his pocket again. It feels like it belongs there.)


	45. Chapter 45

Damask had written of their destination, in that dry and academic way he’d written about most things. He’d thought the legends of the planet of Mortis an exaggeration, its denizens little more than advanced Force users. Of course, others had taken quite a different approach, likening Mortis to the realms of the gods — or what primitives had considered to be gods. There is less room for such mythology now, of course, but after all some still speak of sorcery and magic when speaking of the Force. Gods, Qui-Gon thinks, are not much further a step. 

(It is easy for a Jedi to see such things as petty superstitions. It is their duty, after all, to know things and understand things: there is no ignorance, there is knowledge, they say, and there is the Force. But they live on superstitions and assumptions too, after all, just different ones than the rest of the galaxy. No one, not Qui-Gon, not Sidious, not Plagueis, not any Jedi past or present and not, alas, any other student of the Force knows exactly how it works. Some parts can be quantified, much of it can be studied, but the Force is greater than the comprehension of mortal beings. Where the Republic has never dared to tread, there are ancient creatures to whom a human life is the blink of an eye, there are wellsprings of pure energy and the intelligences that guide them, there is knowledge that cannot be contained by living minds and there is the Force, that presence and existence and power that seems to have a will of its own — it is not folly or primitivism to call these things by any other name. Even calling it the Force, after all, is attaching an external description, just as much as calling it magic or the divine or any other such thing. 

A philosopher said, knowledge is knowing your own ignorance. Another said, wisdom is knowing your own inconsequentiality. People like Qui-Gon would say that knowledge and wisdom are gained through superiority, through overcoming such base things like inconsequentiality.)

Wild Space, as it is called by many in the Republic, is full of things beyond the general understanding. Qui-Gon has spend years traveling it now, he finds it halfway familiar. But it is familiar to him in the way the shifting sands can be familiar to a desert traveler, and he is not fool enough to travel on his own whims. The Force guides him — but it hasn’t guided him well enough here before, so he seats Asajj and Anakin at the controls and sits back. They waffle, at first, but they’ve been taught to listen to a master who tells them something important is happening. 

(Asajj wants to trust him, the Jedi who saved her from the Dark. She wants to believe, against her every instinct, that he has her best interests and the best interests of the galaxy at heart. She is no fool, though, and when he presses her to find the gate she had seen in her visions, to match the stars around them to that sight the Force had granted her, she tries to push back, to plead for them to go back for Knight Kenobi — to call someone to help him — something, anything. His eyes narrow, and something goes _wrong_ about them when he raises his hand to _push_ and she stumbles back in fear. Anakin jumps between them, and Master Jinn jerks back. 

A lesson, then. He doesn’t dare raise a hand against Anakin, Anakin is valuable, Anakin is _something_ — she’s practical, so Anakin is also a shield. She keeps the boy between herself and Master Jinn the rest of the way, though it is not enough. They go where he orders, though, because Jinn is demanding and Anakin is _curious_ , and she cannot fight off the both of them. She considers it, though, wonders if she can burn through the ship itself if she succumbs to the powers she’d tasted on Rattatak, whether she can cast all three of them into the void of space for some sins she can’t quite wrap her mind around. Vengeance, punishment, penance, these are not easy thoughts to shake.)

————— 

They fly. The Force guides them through hyperspace, pulled this way and that along waves Qui-Gon can almost physically feel. It’s fascinating, tantalizing, the taste of the most fundamental form of energy, of _power_. It hums in the air of the ship and in his veins, and it nearly pains him to sit back and let Asajj and Anakin fly. Nearly. The payoff, he thinks, will be enough.

They drop out of hyperspace at last somewhere on the fringes of the Chrelythiumn system, into silent darkness broken only by the gleam of distant stars. There’s nothing there, where they are, not even asteroids or debris, and for a moment of stupid blind fury Qui-Gon thinks he’s been _betrayed_. He rounds on Asajj, who is gazing out into the emptiness like she’s waiting for something, but before he can do anything— 

“Look, there!” Anakin stands up so abruptly he nearly knocks his head into Qui-Gon’s chin. (There’s no better thing for flinging one back into the present moment than activating the fight-or-flight response. Qui-Gon inhales sharply, for a split second startled into being horrified — the edge of the galaxy, and he’s attacking his own apprentice, and Obi-Wan’s been left behind, how could he — but the Dark Side is intoxicating, and he sinks back into it before he has a chance to blink.) 

“Where?” But the boy is pointing, so Qui-Gon looks over and sees it, the gleaming thing like a holocron on some cosmic scale. It’s _calling_ for them, the summons ringing out silently and wordlessly in their minds. 

“Is this the… what _is_ it?” Anakin asks, wide-eyed and fascinated. 

“A door,” Asajj answers quietly. “We… Master Jinn, please let’s go back now, we found it, isn’t that enough?”

“What are you, scared?” Anakin asks. “It _wants_ us to go through.” Good boy. Qui-Gon grins at him. Here is the gate, and here is the key to it, and beyond it lies the knowledge that has been denied for millennia. 

“Let’s not keep it waiting,” he says, and ignore Asajj shirking back in her seat. She’s served her purpose — or perhaps has yet to, perhaps her true purpose lies on the other side. In either case, there’s no time to tarry now. They drift forward, and before them the monolith opens in a crimson gleam. Anakin laughs aloud and guns the engine, and they speed forward — for a few seconds, before all the power goes out. For a moment Qui-Gon can only see the stars, the monolith, and the tapetum lucidum of Asajj’s eyes, then absolute darkness envelops them. 

——————

They must have crashed. He doesn’t remember it but they must have crashed, because the ship is nigh destroyed. The cockpit at least, is intact, and Qui-Gon and the two apprentices are more or less where Qui-Gon had last seen them, Asajj curled in her seat and Anakin with a white-knuckle grip on the control panel. Around them, the planet _sings_. 

“This is it,” says Qui-Gon firmly. “Come. This is the place we needed to find.”

“What is it?” Asajj asks. “There is not… I have never felt the Force like this.”

“Mortis,” Qui-Gon tells her. “The heart of the Force, or so legend has it. Anakin—” But Anakin has clambered out of the cockpit already, on the trail of something Qui-Gon can’t identify. 

“No!” Asajj gasps. “Anakin, come back!” And then she’s off after him. Qui-Gon gives chase, and stumbles onto uneven ground that seems to breathe beneath his feet. This is — this is like nothing else, like nothing _real_. He wants to stop and sit and breathe deeply, let himself be swept up in the currents of the Living Force itself, but there is work to be done.

“Anakin!” he calls. The boy slows. 

“She said this way. C’mon!” he yells back. It’s enough for Asajj to catch up to him and set a firm grip on his shoulder. 

“She-who?” she asks. “I hear no one!”

“The girl!” Anakin insists. “There’s a girl — um, lady I guess? Sorry, are you—” 

“Either suffices,” says a voice somewhere beyond them, and then a gleaming golden figure steps from the air as if she were simply stepping off of a staircase. Anakin gawks openly, and Asajj puts her free hand to her mouth in surprise. (Qui-Gon stares too, though he wouldn’t ever admit it to himself.) The woman — for it certainly looks to be a woman — has a golden getup that shimmers and shifts out of synch with her visible motion and a cascade of green hair that catches on nothing and floats in the air. She tilts her head and smiles in a way that doesn’t quite set correctly on her oddly angled face. 

(The Daughter, as she is termed, wears this human form as a mask. She, like her counterparts, is something quite other, of course, a being that is mostly part of the Force itself. But she and they can approximate the appearance of lesser beings, so before these Jedi she looks as close to human as she can, in hopes of eliciting their empathy and cooperation. She isn’t off to a good start, though: here there is the Chosen One they seek, most likely, and a girl to whom the memory of blood clings like a second skin, and of the teacher… No, this is a sign of a galaxy already out of balance. This is not what should have come. This is not when it should have come. But how to fix it? That, however, she doesn’t know.)

—————— 

She tells them a thoroughly petty story as she leads them along. Here on Mortis she resides with her father and brother, both entities like her, and here they oversee the flow of the Force. Recently, however, there has been unrest — the rise of the Dark Side yet again, both outside their sanctuary and within it. Her brother, she explains, has become part of the Dark Side, a conduit for it, and his power grows as her own remains and their father weakens. She had hoped, as had her father, that the Chosen One would be able to set things to rights, and yet — 

“You are but a child,” she says. Anakin pouts. 

“I’m not a child!” he grumbles. “If you think I can help, I want to. That’s what Jedi are supposed to do.” 

“You are not fully a Jedi,” says the woman. “Still a student, and such you will still remain for many years. Both of you…” She passes a critical eye over Asajj, then shakes her head. 

“Master Jinn is a full Jedi,” Anakin points out. She seems like she is making to answer, when a massive cracking rings out overhead, a sound and sensation at once like a collapsing building and the collapse of a mind’s defenses against the Force. Something falls, and the cliff upon which they are walking gives the sensation of splitting in two right before Qui-Gon’s foot. (He wobbles and catches himself in rather ungainly fashion.) Anakin yelps and grabs the woman’s arm, but it’s of little use — the two of them are on one side of the divide, while Qui-Gon and Asajj are on the other. 

“My brother,” the woman says. “He knows you are here. Stay, all three of you. I will see to him.”

“I’ll go with you,” says Anakin immediately. 

“Surely we can follow—“ Qui-Gon begins, but the glare she turns on him is like staring straight at a nova. He recoils. 

“ _You_ ,” she says sharply, “Will do nothing. Stay. I cannot stop the child accompanying me, but you two stay.”

And off she sweeps with Anakin at her heels. Qui-Gob glares after them and makes a vain attempt to cross the divide. It proves even more impassable than it appears. Asajj huffs loudly behind him, so he turns to glare at her instead. 

“ _Now_ can we please call for help?” she asks, as if it’s the most reasonable thing to do in the world. 

“Fine, go back to the ship,” he says. Whatever’s left of it, anyway. The communications system had been broken to begin with, it was unlikely to be even extant now. “I’m going after them.”

“Why?” Her eyes are big and blue in the strange light here, bluer than they’re supposed to be, blue like something blooming. There’s fear behind them. “What is this place to you, master?”

“The answer,” he tells her. To their left is a sheer cliff face, to their right is an endless drop, and yet… He shuts his eyes and reaches out with the Force, then steps rightward off of the cliff and up. Beneath his foot, something solid forms. 

(When he opens his eyes again, four steps later, there’s no cliff in sight and he’s halfway up a staircase of warm stone cut into a hill. There is no sign of Asajj either, but he barely notices and breaks into a run.)


	46. Chapter 46

(Asajj runs. Later on, when she is calmer and everything is over and she is back in the temple on Coruscant, she will stretch and twist Qui-Gon’s words and look Mace Windu squarely in the eyes and say Master Jinn had _told_ her to go back to the ship, that it had been a clear instruction rather than an offhand dismissal interpreted as permission. For now, the dismissal rings in her ears. 

This place, this Mortis, is bizarre in a way that turns her stomach. Here the Force is so much more alive then it has any right to be, everything sings with it and it feels like the air itself is staring at her. The ground moves beneath her feet, trying to steer her one way or another, but she has given up playacting humanity and leaps ahead like an animal, a predator, a tzic-soo—or a nightsister. She isn’t sure when it starts, but someone falls into pace beside her, so similar in gait and appearance that she at first thinks it is her own shadow, twisted by Mortis’s effects to bear a face.)

The climb is steep, but Qui-Gon can hardly feel it. The Force is strong here, the Living Force is palpable in the air, and he is stronger for it. It seems like no time at all before he has reached the top of the stone stairs, only to see another peak looming above him and a sprawling landscape of iridescent colors below. A woman is carefully descending the slope some way away, palms raised in the manner of a Jedi used to catching herself using the Force. He knows her. He knows the fall of her hair, the slight sway of her step, the shape of her face and the bright, clever glint he knows is in her eye. _Tahl._ Of course he knows her, of course he hasn’t lost her, of course he can find her here. 

Perhaps he has whispered her name, perhaps she can sense him here, but Tahl pauses mid-step, raises her head and looks at him. He can feel her smile, as warm as it has ever been, and she raises a hand in a familiar greeting. There’s still time, isn’t there? If he runs, he can meet her before she reaches the bottom of the hill, can’t he? She’s still there, she’s waiting, he can still — 

“Are you going to give up that easily?” 

Qui-Gon starts sharply and looks up. Hego Damask sits on a chair on a ledge above him, dark cloak about his shoulders and his fingers steepled. Qui-Gon (gapes like a fish) makes some sort of confused interrogatory noise at the dead Sith Lord. Damask tilts his head. 

“I had hoped you had a more… fundamental understanding of this universe.”

(The landscape glimmers, golden and black, and Asajj is sure she hasn’t crossed this way before. The shadow slows to a stop when she does, but stands still and silent while Asajj turns warily on the spot and tries to get her bearings. It looks the same in all directions, and worse yet _feels_ the same, blinding and overwhelming. The shadow catches her eye and gives a soft, sad smile. Now that she looks closer, Asajj can see vague differences between them—they are the same height and build, though the shadow is a bit less spindly and wearing a midriff-baring outfit in some vaguely familiar style instead of robes, and they have the same strange almost-but-not-quite-rattataki cast of the face that Asajj is pretty sure dathomiri women share, but the shadow’s facial markings differ, her lips are fuller, her eyes are rounder. Older, maybe, old enough to be a young woman rather than a gawky teenager. 

“Help me,” Asajj whispers. She isn’t sure if she is speaking to a hallucination or some trick of the Force. The shadow doesn’t speak, but points carefully with one gray hand. Asajj squints that way and spies, over the weird crags and crevices, the telltale dull white-and-gray of a Republic ship. She nearly sags with relief, babbles some incoherent thanks, and sprints that way. The shadow accompanies her and doesn’t laugh at all when Asajj presses a rather kiss to the familiar battered metal. 

When she takes a deep breath and sits back on her heels to consider her next move, the shadow raises a hand again. This time it points, with the appearance of curiosity, at the lightsaber at Asajj’s waist. The girl obliges and lights it, finding comfort in the familiar hum against her palm. 

“A Jedi’s weapon,” she tells the shadow, thinking vaguely that whoever it is may not know. “My weapon. I’m—I’m an apprentice.” The shadow’s lips move silently, but its face lights up with delight.) 

“You had seemed to be on the right track,” says Damask. Muuns aren’t particularly expressive, and his voice is still a flat wheeze, but he communicates his disappointment quite clearly. “You found the key, you found this place, you brought my holocron — even that stray you picked up has the potential to be useful, but you are willing to throw all of that away.”

“Throw it away?” Qui-Gon scoffs. “Don’t be absurd.” Below them, Tahl puts a hand on her hip and makes a questioning gesture. _Aren’t you coming?_ “I— She — She was a friend of mine.” 

“We are supposed to give up that which ties us to our pasts,” says Damask. “It is difficult, but failure to do so means failure overall. I dwelled too long on my past self, on love for a student, on love for a home, and look what has become of me. I am a shadow, unable to complete my work, unable to do more than watch the galaxy unravel around us.”

“Love?” Qui-Gon asks. It seems odd. The Sith do not love, surely. Damask sighs.

“Love,” he repeats. “Do you think me are incapable of that? More the fool you are, Qui-Gon Jinn. Love, attachment, even we the Sith struggle to let go of such things. But the moment you set another person before yourself, before your goals, that is the moment you lose you target and your own power, as I have lost mine.”

“To Sidious,” Qui-Gon says quietly. Damask nods, and it makes him look ancient and weary. 

“My student — like a son to me, but I suppose I was never like a father to him.”

“I know.” The words slip out of Qui-Gon’s mouth before he thinks them through. “I know what you mean. Students who betray their masters are… not uncommon.”

“We do our best by them, and yet they think themselves superior,” says Damask. “Even the ones with such narrow visions. Sidious had all the potential one could ask for, and he will squander it on politics and scheming when there are such grander things to focus on. What value is the Republic beside the Force itself?”

What value is the Republic here? What value is it at all? The war is coming, and from his vantage point Qui-Gon can see it cannot be stopped. The valley into which Tahl is descending is littered with the dead, bodies in white armor and brown robes, shattered lightsabers, burning wreckage. Smoke stings Qui-Gon’s eyes. It’s already over, over before it has begun. 

“Is that the choice? The Republic or the Force?” he asks. 

“Fool,” says Damask. “You know it is no choice. This the death of the Republic, Qui-Gon Jinn. The choice is what happens after. Sidious will only destroy. He has no notion of a future, no notion of life. He does not understand that we can be reborn from the ashes of this chaos to become greater and more powerful than ever before—just as long as we cut ourselves free from _this_. I could not. If you cannot, then there remains nothing. Death. Just death.”

“I brought Anakin here,” Qui-Gon says, and hates how pleading he sounds. “I found him — the Chosen One, I brought him here. Isn’t that—“

“So you have brought a _weapon_ ,” Damask snaps. “Who will wield it if you fail? Your _students_ , perhaps? Or perhaps _mine_.”

(The communicators are broken, of course. Asajj will swear it the communicators could not have survived the crash, later on, and Mace Windu will hear the echo of a another — _he jumped, you never asked me where_ — in the sincerity and technical truthfulness of her words. But she is a Jedi, she will be a Jedi, so she sits on her heels and pulls them apart and picks working pieces fo put back together, bits of the handheld comms and the damaged control board from the ship, narrating her actions to her shadowy companion. The latter seems to listen and watch with fascination. 

“And now—“ Asajj clicks the last pieces into place and shuts the cover. “Please work.” 

A crackle of sound, mostly static, is her response, but anything is better than the suffocating silence or the sound of her own voice. She presses the button she hopes will send an all-lines emergency signal, then holds her breath. For a long moment there is nothing, then the comm makes a noise like lightning striking a speeder. Asajj slumps. The shadow sits down and slumps beside her. 

“Please,” she tells the comm for lack of anything else to do or say. “I need to call for help. The Jedi—anyone.” She tries again, and this time the noise is followed by a voice, too distorted to recognize and cutting out at times. 

“—distress signal?” the voice asks. “—your coordinates. The signal — damage.”

“Hello?” The audio inputs had been beyond repair, so she has to lean across the cockpit to speak into a manual nav board port. “Can you hear me? This—this is Asajj Ventress—“

“Padawan Ventess?” the voice asks, followed by several seconds of garbled static. Good enough. 

She has to gamble that whoever it is can hear her—and wants to help, so she recites what details she can. Coordinates, flight patterns, the strange monolith, Anakin, what Master Jinn had called the planet and where they had abandoned Knight Kenobi. There is a long silence when she finishes speaking, and she wonders if anything has gone through at all, and then—

“Go nowhere,” the voice orders. “—will retrieve you.”)

Silhouetted against the valley of the dead, Tahl looks mournful. Her robes flutter in a wind Qui-Gon can’t feel, and she sighs visibly and runs her hands over her face. 

“This is the death of the Republic,” Qui-Gon tells Damask, “but it is not the death of the galaxy. Even if the war can’t be stopped, I can save them, I can stop the destruction Sidious seeks.”

“A new empire, a new enlightenment,” says Damask, then smiles ruefully. “That is what is needed. Not the Dark Side, not the stasis of the Jedi and the Republic, but the enlightenment of truth. It took too long for me to see that.”

Qui-Gon spares one last glance down below. Tahl reaches out to him. _It’s not too late._ No, it isn’t too late. Tahl, all off them, they’ll see. And Qui-Gon will see them on the other side. 

“Uphill, from here?” he asks Damask. Damask nods. 

“Not far now,” the old muun says. “Just do remember to prioritize.”

———————

( _Far above, far below, we never know how we will fall. Far above, far below, what once was great is rendered small._ A mantra, a poem, a lesson that Maul knows well. None, he knows, can truly predict their own end, not even the greatest of prophets of the Sith, and all things end. 

Here is an end, he thinks, none could have predicted. Maul himself, on the far side of some fool peacekeeping mission undertaken on behalf of a Jedi he’d nearly killed, clutching a comm through which he has gotten perhaps half of a message from a terrified and lost Jedi padawan who had called him, not so long ago with a delighted laugh, _brother_. He shouldn’t care. He cannot care, he cannot _not_ care, for the girl Asajj, for fearless little Anakin, for Kenobi who beats him with dejarik with alarming regularity, for Master Jinn even as the old man slips further into that esoteric sort of study that Maul only barely understands, for the togruta Shaak Ti with her dangling pendants and sharp-toothed smile, for clever and brave Aayla, for the archivist Nu who answers questions so willingly, for little apprentices and initiates, for books and food given freely and a cell more comfortable and peaceful than anything Lord Sidious had ever provided. 

The knowledge troubles him. He doesn’t know what to do with _caring_. The Sith have no connections beyond that of the master and apprentice. The Jedi have no attachments. _There is only the Force, and the Force shall…_ the Force shall… 

_There is no peace, there is only passion. Through passion there is strength, through strength there is power, through power there is victory, and through victory…_ Through victory…

No. There is no peace, there is only passion, there is vengeance that drives passion, and someone has harmed — someone has harmed _his sister_ , and from what she has told him that person has harmed Kenobi and Jinn and Anakin. Through passion there is strength, and Maul cannot sit idly by when he can instead seize upon it. A comm crackles behind him, in the back of the ship — Jinn’s ship, he realizes, and hurries to pick it up. There is a proper channel to call through on the ship’s nav panel, but no one has used it to check in. This one is old and dented and looks like it has been stashed behind some supplies and forgotten. 

“Jinn! Answer me. You are not in trouble, but you are needed to answer!” That’s Shaak Ti’s voice, thick with worry even with the distortion from the old equipment. “Jinn! Qui-Gon, please!”

“Jinn is not here,” Maul informs her flatly. The togruta master’s image appears over the comm, flickering and twisting. 

“Maul?” she asks. “Why have you Jinn’s ship?” Her Basic is slipping. Maul frowns. Jinn is missing, with the others. Perhaps honesty would be best, if he wants to recover them — and he does. 

“Jinn loaned it to me to finish his mission. He took his padawan and said he had something else to do. I received a transmission from Padawan Ventress — it appears they rendezvoused with Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker and got stranded somewhere in Wild Space. Chrelythiumn.” Silence from the Jedi. “I intend to go after them, as this mission is concluded.”

“Retrieve Kenobi first,” she says finally. “Jinn and Ventress appear to have gone rogue — they took Skywalker and left Kenobi imprisoned. We can make an exchange now, yes? Ventress’s location for Kenobi’s. Bring all four of them back, and— and you will be rewarded.”

_Far above, far below, we never know how we will fall._ Maul bares his teeth in frustration. 

“The apprentice did nothing. She is frightened. It was Jinn.” That changes things, but it doesn’t change them enough. He’d thought Jinn … _better_ than that, better than the sort of people who strike blind fear into their students, but if he isn’t that doesn’t matter. “I will find them and bring them to Coruscant.”)


	47. Chapter 47

At the top of the hill stands an ancient-looking and beautiful temple. Qui-Gon doesn’t recognize the style, but he can tell it is older than any he has seen — older than the buried Sith temple he had stumbled upon, older than anything built upon Coruscant, far older than the Republic itself. He takes a moment to look up at it, and it looms over him. For a moment it blots out the sky, he thinks, there is nothing else here except this temple and what it contains. When next he blinks the image shifts; it’s just a towering building with something _very important_ within it. 

Inside, it seems even taller, but the height of the ceiling seems dwarfed by the man sitting on a high-backed chair at what seems to be the head of the room. Qui-Gon himself is a tall man, but he is certain that were he to stand beside this stranger he would not reach up to his — or perhaps _its_ narrow shoulder. It is not quite an old man as much as a facsimile of one, the way the green-haired girl had been, the way most likely all things native to this place are. There is no similarity in their features, really, between this old man and the girl, but Qui-Gon makes a best guess anyway. 

“I believe I met your daughter,” he says. The old man blinks slowly and stares at him. It doesn’t feel like a stare, at least not one coming from anywhere near where the eyes seem to be. 

“Yes,” it says finally. “And I wish it were not so.”

——————

(Kenobi does not so much need springing from prison as he needs a lift from the planet he has been left upon. He has already talked his way out of the cell and, when Maul arrives, is having tea with a former captor in an attempt to talk his way into ownership of a ship. Truthfully, Maul is a bit relieved to know he doesn’t need to play negotiator here, and Kenobi cracks a grin when Maul bluntly informs all present he can provide transportation and remove the Jedi from their midst. It’s a fleeting expression but a warm one, one that for a split second makes Maul want to smile back — not that he’s wholly sure how — but the next instant Kenobi’s face is a blank mask again. 

He tells Kenobi the abbreviated version of what he knows, and watches the blank expression go blanker. There is little behind that expression that is allowed into the Force — if Kenobi is upset at his master’s betrayal or worried for the apprentices or disappointed that is Maul who has come to his aid rather than one of his closer associates, Maul can’t tell. _There is no emotion, there is peace,_ that is the Jedi way. 

“A poor sign for my future,” Kenobi says abruptly. Maul makes a questioning noise and keeps plugging in coordinates. “Master Dooku, Vosa, Xanatos — now Master Jinn. This lineage does not make for very good Jedi.”

“They call you exemplary,” Maul answers. There is no emotion, but whatever Kenobi is doing does not seem like peace, does it? The Jedi laughs dryly. 

“I suppose they do. Do you think— He stops. “Never mind. I quite don’t care what you think.”

“Good,” Maul tells him, then guns the hyperdrive so hard it knocks Kenobi into his seat.)

——————

“The balance of the Force can be restored,” Qui-Gon tells the old man. “That is why I have come here — _we_ have come here. The Chosen One has power enough to do it, I just need to understand—“

“You will never understand,” the old man interrupts sharply. “The Force, the true nature of the Force, it is beyond the grasp of mortal minds. Even what we are, myself and my children, you cannot grasp but the edges of our existence and the masks we can wear. That is the horror of it, Jedi. You can twist and alter the Force, wield it as a weapon or carry it as a faith, you can set the galaxy out of balance and kill stars and star systems and living things, but you will never understand what it is you are a part of. We have tried. Many have tried.” Something sighs. It might be the old man, it might be the temple, it might be the planet or the Living Force itself. “But we have failed. One cannot be a custodian of what one cannot understand, Jedi, and our time is ending. What comes next…”

“The death of the Force,” Qui-Gon says, feeling desperation rise like bile. He hasn’t come this far just to be turned away at the gates! He hasn’t, he _can’t_ allow it. “It has been foretold. But it doesn’t _need_ to happen. People can be _made_ to understand, and Anakin— Anakin is something like you!”

Isn’t he? Isn’t he? On Mortis Qui-Gon feels like an outsider and Asajj sticks out like a bruise upon the landscape, but Anakin fits almost seamlessly, and he glows with all the power he has ever had. His true nature isn’t suppressed here, and standing beside the green-haired girl he could well have been her little brother. 

“He is,” says the old man, but he doesn’t sound triumphant. Quite the opposite, really. “But he is also something like _you_ , and something at once too late and too early. Even we fall, and we are Three. The child is … not even half of a One.”

“Then _fix_ him. If he’s halfway to being what you need—“

“That cannot be done,” the old man intones with a grave finality. “There are limits to what can be changed. A mind cannot be forged anew once it exists.”

“The Dark Side does the very thing,” Qui-Gon snaps, and feels the old man’s stare from a dozen angles. 

“Is that what you believe?” he asks. He doesn’t sound angry, he sounds tired. Qui-Gon wants him angry, he wants the old man to yell and fight and defy this fate that seems to be descending upon them without anyone’s permission. 

“I— we must rise again from the ashes. A new empire, a new enlightenment, the fundamental truth of the Force. We can become greater and more powerful than ever before—just as long as we cut ourselves free from _this_.” Are those his words? Surely not. Damask had said something like that, hadn’t he? But he’d only said what Qui-Gon had already thought, already believed. His saber is in his hand, and he takes a step towards the old man. Foolish, really. This isn’t a creature he can cut down. “A power beyond the Dark Side or the Light, but if the Dark Side is the path to it, so be it.”

“This I have heard before,” says the old man. Qui-Gon pauses.

“From whom?” But he knows even before he finishes speaking that they are no longer alone. Something else is here, something cold and dark, and a hand closes on Qui-Gon’s shoulder.

“From me,” a deep voice announces. “Let’s you and I have a conversation, ‘Jedi’.”

——————

(Sith Lords do not swear. Probably. Maul doesn’t, in any case, but he does consider it when they drop out of hyperspace at the coordinates Asajj had given him. Empty space, dim and far-off stars, and the taste of fear and distant screaming. His vision flickers — _elsewhere, suddenly, an arrogant voice with a Coruscanti accent, an empire, millions of voices crying out at once only to be suddenly, permanently silenced_. Sith Lords don’t yelp either, but he certainly lets out an undignified noise when Kenobi grabs his arm. 

“I take it you felt that?” the Jedi asks. This time his discomfort is palpable and his face is several shades paler than normal. 

“Something is wrong here,” Maul says instead of answering. “Keep your wits about you — unless you wish to follow the rest of your lineage.” Kenobi’s mask falls back into place, though he does take a moment to glower. “The padawan said something about an obelisk. Do you see it?”

“If it was some trick of the Force, it may not be—“ Kenobi inhales sharply and points at empty space, which is really quite annoying. “There, look.”

“Excellent,” says Maul, since he really has no time to waste being annoyed about petty things when he can be furious about more important ones. “Fly us through it.”

“Get a droid, why don’t you,” says Kenobi, but takes the controls. 

And then he flies them through nothing into some darker nothing and only avoids crashing them into the suddenly appearing and oddly _alive_ surface of the planet because Maul can see in the dark, elbows him in the ribs, and manages a rather shaky landing while reaching over half the control panel, a seat, and Kenobi himself. Kenobi kicks him, but only once they’re on the ground. Maul bites down on the urge to hit back and growls something about having apprentices to rescue. As he clambers out onto the unfamiliar world, he pretends not to hear Kenobi mutter that he’s sounding rather Jedi lately. 

Asajj isn’t there. The ship she’d arrived on is, albeit in pieces, and there’s her comm on the ground still crackling and giving off the occasional spark, but she isn’t there. Fear is his ally, but dread is not — this planet is askew, and Asajj is still weak, unsure of what she is, and while Maul cannot fathom what could become of the girl he does not think it would be anything good. He can find no trace of her, but there is a heavy not-scent in the air, like blooming flowers and kyber but liquid. 

“One of the locals?” Kenobi asks. He doesn’t sound convinced. A few paces away, he kneels and picks a nearly luminescent feather off of the ground. “Something has been here, anyway.”

“Find it, find the apprentices,” Maul guesses. “Move.”)

——————

Qui-Gon wakes in a high tower. He can see through a window, and below him Mortis _sprawls_ like some sort of dying and diseased thing. How odd. It had seemed full of life not long before. 

“Terrible, isn’t it?” asks a deep voice, the voice of the creature that had taken him from that old man’s temple. “It needs to change. My father thinks this is the end, of course, but you don’t agree with him.” This one only barely approximates a human form. He towers too, but flames flicker beneath his skin and in his eyes. He means to be frightening. Compared to the other two, he rather strikes Qui-Gon as honest. 

“I don’t,” Qui-Gon says. “You sister told us you had fallen.” 

“What is a fall?” the creature asks. “My sister does my father’s bidding. She brought you here. She took your students. She bends the knee and obeys and accepts, all in the name of some nebulous greater good. And what has that done? The Force is out of balance, the galaxy is collapsing, even the old man’s last failsafe has been subverted. I refuse to bow. That truth that you seek — I can help you find it.” He pauses, stands at Qui-Gon’s shoulder. “There will be sacrifices for that, of course.”

“The old man,” Qui-Gon guesses. The creature nods. 

“And my sister, if she stands with him. And I cannot guarantee the safety of your students — surely you understand that.” He pauses, clearly unwilling to go on unless given agreement.

“The Force is with Anakin,” he says, and the creature nods. 

“But the girl…” he prompts, almost gentle. 

“She has served her purpose,” Qui-Gon says, and it isn’t a lie. “Do what you must. If you can aid me, I am with you.” The creature bares a mouthful of sharp teeth in a smile. 

“Yes,” he says. “You are.”


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay on this one! This is either the penultimate or third-to-last chapter of this fic, so thank you all for sticking around!

(“You must be strong,” the green lady tells Asajj. This time she is speaking directly to her, so Anakin doesn’t hear a word despite being close enough for Asajj to kick him if she weren’t being held in place. They’re both clearly prisoners, though, and the green lady is clearly in cahoots with the strange old man and the thing with fire in its eyes so really Asajj has no desire to take advice from her. 

“Let us go,” she snarls, glaring with every bit of glare she can muster. The green lady sighs and turns away. Maybe that isn’t the sort of strong she wants, but it is the only sort Asajj can attempt. Strong like a tsic-soo, strong like a monster, strong like never relying on a master again, strong enough to rip the teeth from little biting creatures that smell of fire. Her arm burns where the thing had gotten her, like fire spreading beneath her skin. It hadn’t bothered biting Anakin. Anakin is special. Anakin is important. Anakin is better, is Chosen, is the sort of thing that changes galaxies. 

Well. She’ll see how _important_ he’ll be after she tears his heart out.)

—————————

It’s war, the Son tells Qui-Gon, a small-scale prelude to what will unfold in the galaxy beyond. In war there are sacrifices, but there are also winners, and the Son is certain of his own impending victory. 

“My father was once One,” he tells Qui-Gon. “He created us. There is no reason why we cannot start again.” 

“Can you do that? Create others like yourself?” It’s rather too late for questions like that, and surely ultimate power is ultimate power. The Son scoffs. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asks. “Mortals made that boy, that _Chosen One_ , and I am far superior.” 

“Of course,” says Qui-Gon. “And I am here too. As you said—mortals can do it.” The Son approximates staring down his nose. 

(Arrogance and folly. The Son does not know how to create, for his aspect us destruction. Qui-Gon, likewise, seems to have forgotten the late Darth Plagueis’s most truthful confession: that the old man had been dabbling blindly and had not known what he had wrought. For all his arrogance and for all the darkness he held claim to, Plagueis had grasped the limits of his own abilities quite well. Had the will of the Force been slightly different, he would perhaps have made a good Jedi. But that’s speculation.)

The Son has laid a clever trap indeed: poisoned as she is, Asajj will surely attack—whether she attacks Anakin or the Daughter it will force the Father’s hand. That, of course, would give the Son the opportunity to strike him down at last Better still, it will likely force _Anakin’s_ hand as well—if the boy embraces his full powers now, he will be nigh unstoppable, both Qui-Gon and the Son agree, and an unstoppable weapon means a quick end to wars in favor of whoever wields it. That’s what they both want, isn’t it?

—————————

(Maul acts like an akk dog on a scent. It would be amusing if the whole affair wasn’t deadly serious, but circumstances rather make the situation. Obi-Wan follows on the Sith’s heels and tries to radiate calm. 

“Have you anything approaching a plan?” he asks. Maul growls. 

“Grab the apprentices, kill everyone else.”

“Straightforward, certainly,” says Obi-Wan, and he rather thinks Maul would have stopped and turned and glared were they anywhere else. 

“Elaborate scheming is overrated,” he snaps instead. 

“Not everything can be solved with the business end of a lightsaber, you know.” Mockery comes easily. The Jedi do not hate, so Obi-Wan doesn’t hate Maul, but there is a whole spectrum of dislikes that are far less blinding and far more permissible. 

“I do not,” says Maul archly, “even _have_ my lightsaber.” _All of this, all of this, in some roundabout way is Maul’s fault, Master Qui-Gon had been perfectly fine before they’d met Maul on Tatooine_ — but that’s irrational. Maul had been a weapon, an agent, at best a student, no more to blame for Master Qui-Gon’s madness than Anakin or Obi-Wan himself, the true blame surely is with his Sith masters. 

And yet. If Obi-Wan thinks too much, he can hang the blame around Anakin’s neck too, think to himself that it’s best the boy is gotten rid of before he can become … whatever it is he is, whatever it is that burns like a nova behind his sunny smile, and then he is disgusted with himself for thinking it. His own hands aren’t clean here either, after all, he’d been at Master Qui-Gon’s side for so many years, and at best had failed to see the fall. If he thinks too much, he can say he’d _encouraged_ it with his own arrogance and rashness, that he’d led his master to the edge of the abyss and sat back and _watched_...

“You don’t want to save him, sir, that’s why,” says a calm voice beside him. Obi-Wan blinks. He’d only lost track of Maul for a moment, but there was no sign of the zabrak anywhere now. Instead, Obi-Wan is surrounded by soldiers who look as though they are made from smoke. Some are faces he recognizes, vaguely — these had fought on Naboo, these in the dozens of other small wars that he and Master Qui-Gon had found themselves a part of — and others wear the armor from his visions, impeccable white and styled like Mandalorian commandos. It’s one of the latter set that has spoken. 

“Of course I want to save him,” Obi-Wan says sharply. “I want to save all of them.” It isn’t a lie, not really. The word _want_ encompasses many things, from wishing to desire. There are many many things Obi-Wan wishes were true. 

“Forgive the impertinence, sir, but you don’t want to save anyone,” says the soldier. He sounds young, like a padawan whose voice has just broken. “You could have done a lot, but you don’t want to. It’s because of the Force, isn’t it? The will of the Force can’t be changed, and if it means we die, then we die.” There are more smoke-soldiers appearing from the shadows now. Time is nothing to the Force — they are the dead past, present, and future.

“You won’t die,” Obi-Wan says with as much conviction as he can muster. “You may be dead here, but I will not let you die. Tell me your name.” The soldier laughs. 

“We haven’t got names, sir. Not to people like you. To Jedi.”

“Everyone has a name,” says Obi-Wan. Do they? He isn’t sure. What’s one soldier in a war, to the Jedi? What, even, is one master, one apprentice, one child — the Jedi have to think on a galactic scale. But Obi-Wan is just a person, and he holds out some mad stupid hope that the galactic scale and the personal one will converge. “Please,” he tells the soldier. “Do your friends call you something? Your family? Your— your unit?” The silence is suffocating. 

“Cody,” the soldier says at last. “My brothers call me Cody.” There must be millions of them, the ghostly soldiers, filed in orderly rows so tightly that they blot out the sky, millions of the faux-Mandalorians along and then millions of others. “Does it matter, truly, sir?” 

Of course it doesn’t. One out of millions doesn’t matter if you look at the millions. Obi-Wan isn’t here to save his master, not really. He’s here to stop him. Cody, the soldier, bows his head, and Obi-Wan opens his mouth to assure him of something pointless and then — 

“Kenobi!” A gloved hand closes on his arm and he finds himself staring up into Maul’s sharp yellow eyes. “Ignore the visions. They are trying to sway us.”

“Did you see…?” Obi-Wan starts, but he isn’t sure what he wants to ask.

“Nothing of importance,” Maul says, and starts to physically drag him along.) 

————————

The Son’s plan works, or at least the first part of it does. Poisoned by the Dark Side, Asajj escapes her restraints and attacks Anakin, who panics and calls for help instead of striking her down. The Father and the Daughter materialize to intervene, and the Son stages his attack. Of course, that’s where the success ends, because the Daughter rounds on him and communicates the sentiment _not so fast_ so vehemently that Qui-Gon stops dead in his tracks and the next instant Obi-Wan stands with his lightsaber drawn in a doorway freshly cut from the not-stone wall. For a moment everything is silent and still. 

(This is a shatterpoint. The Father, the Daughter, the Son, they are important in that they are vessels of something greater still. The Son is quite right about one thing: if they are struck down, they will be reborn, again and again as long as there is the Force, and the Force will exist as long as there is life. There will be another, there will always be — such is the way of the Force that nothing, no Sith Lord and no prophecy and no weapon, no golden age and no government and no guardian of the peace, nothing happens only once. Time means nothing to the Force. Ancient powers stand in opposition to each other, the Chosen One stands at the altars of Mortis, the lines of the Jedi and the Sith converge — and at the same time someone drops a pin, somewhere, sometime, and we pause in the second before it hits the ground.)

“Do it,” Qui-Gon orders. Not that he needs to, since the Son moves before he even begins to speak. The Father turns to meet him, and they clash. (On some level, a young man attacks an old man with a twisted dagger, while a young woman skists the edges of their conflict and kneels beside a snarling, agonized girl. Let’s go with that. It’s close enough to the truth and far less complicated.) Obi-Wan rushes to free Anakin, who promptly attempts to join the fray. (He’s a hotheaded teenager, of course he does. It is no sign of being Chosen, that.) Obi-Wan grabs him by the shoulders and Maul comes out of nowhere and unceremoniously shoves the boy back before lunging at the Son himself. (It’s a Sith’s practicality. He cannot help Asajj, and the Son has a weapon that the other Ones treat as far more dangerous than Kenobi’s saber.)

“Oh, fools!” the Daughter hisses. Asajj takes the opportunity to kick her in the face, grab back her own saber, and lunge snarling — at Qui-Gon, who certainly doesn’t expect it. (There is something said about the best-laid of plans.) She is stronger than she was on Rattatak, but so is he, and though she manages to leave a burning wound across his face he pins her and raises his own saber to finish her off. Stupid idea, far too slow — Maul tackles him and they both go sprawling, Maul’s gloved hands closing on his throat. (Maul is stronger too, and he knows his enemy, and having something to fight _for_ tends to help.) 

“Maul, enough!” Obi-Wan yells over the fray, and to Qui-Gon’s renewed surprise the Sith apprentice obeys and drops him. Once Qui-Gon recovers his breath and his wits he spies Maul carrying a struggling Asajj and pushing the Daughter towards the door. Someone else yells, the Son throws his dagger, and the Daughter gasps almost too softly when it buries itself in her chest. She stands very still, but suddenly seems to fill the room with her presence. 

“Is that what you wanted?” she asks. The Son and the Father stare at her wordlessly. “Is this what was meant? Dear brother. My death is not your victory.”

“But it is your defeat,” the Son replies. 

“No,” she says, and Qui-Gon knows her next words before she speaks them. “It is death, just death.” And she drops in a shower of white lights. The dagger clatters to the ground.

“Have you not done enough?” asks the Father, but it’s far too late to have done _enough_. Qui-Gon reaches for the weapon and it flies to his hand as if it belongs there. Obi-Wan tries to catch his eye across the hall, but it’s too late for that too. Qui-Gon holds the dagger out to his co-conspirator. 

“To the last one standing,” says the Son, then takes it. This time, the Father barely fights back, and it is a matter of moments, minutes, before the Son stands triumphant — and horrified. The latter overwhelms the former and he staggers back, away from where the old man has fallen. 

“You _killed_ him!” Anakin yells suddenly, as if the past however long has just now made an impression upon him. “You killed him and the green lady! She was — they were your _family_! And you hurt Asajj and she didn’t _do_ anything to you! You’re a traitor!” The Son backs away another step, shaking his head. 

“No,” he says, “No, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

“A bit late for cold feet,” Qui-Gon mutters. Presumably the Son can hear him anyway, but he doesn’t respond. The dagger drops from his hand.

(There is horror and there is horror. The Son would not weep for his father and sister, but their deaths sap his power and render him mortal. Darkness cannot exist without light, nor light without darkness, and the wielders of each are reborn again and again in answer to one another. Darkness cannot triumph the way the Son wishes to triumph, because without its counterweight it simply becomes perfectly ordinary. There are planets and moons where sunlight is a distant dream, where all things are darkness, and where the living go about their business quite without fear of things like endless night. There are living things native to the fires and magma of Mustafar. In his moment of victory the Son sees his own defeat, because now he is not One of Three but one of many.)

Anakin moves like a flash. They can see him, they can watch it, but it is still in the space between breaths that he takes up the dagger of Mortis and pierces through the Son’s chest, fury and hate written plainly across his young face. From around them, beneath them, there is a sound like a thunderclap, and then silence.


	49. Chapter 49

It’s over, isn’t it?

There is a sound like a thunderclap and then — 

_There is no death, there is the Force._

And then it is as though all the life, all the breath, all the _existence_ of Mortis has fallen away. Stillness and silence don’t quite cover it, nor does emptiness — this is more than the void, this is cessation itself, and it is terrible. Qui-Gon looks out over the nothing and tastes despair like bile on his tongue. 

On another level, he looks out over the room at a furious, frightened child with a dagger standing over a corpse, and that is the future too. (Anakin’s gone and done something rash, something he regrets as soon as it’s too late, Anakin only hasn’t got blood on his hands because the thing he killed doesn’t bleed, Anakin will have sixteen excuses and the conviction he did the right thing by the time he’s asked about it. Anakin can end the war, but a war is easily ended if all parties are dead and stars have burned out.)

There is cessation, the death of the Force — 

And then there is cacophony. 

“You _fool_ ,” Qui-Gon snarls, and takes a step toward Anakin. This is all _his_ fault, the boy had started it and now he’d gone and _ruined_ it! Obi-Wan grabs Anakin around the middle and hauls the boy away, Anakin drops the dagger with a crash worthy of a far larger and heavier object, Maul barks an order at them to _move_ and Qui-Gon gives chase just a bit too late.

Of course it’s too late.

Mortis dissolves around them, no longer held together and fueled by the powers of the Ones. Ahead of him, Obi-Wan drags Anakin through what had been the been the door of what had been the building, shoves him ahead, and then he turns. It’s an odd angle to see his former apprentice at, Qui-Gon thinks; wide-eyed in the collapsing world Obi-Wan looks like a stranger, like something grossly out of place. He opens is mouth to say something and— 

“Kenobi!”

And turns his back and flees. By the time Qui-Gon reaches the door, there’s nothing there, no door and no wall and certainly no Obi-Wan. He whirls around, or tries to, but there’s no room— no floor — nothing. He can’t keep his footing and falls, terrified, into the abyss.

_And the Force shall free me._

He can’t die here, this can’t be the end. This isn’t the end, he refuses it. He hasn’t come so far just to die here. The Force is silent here, but he rages into it anyway and then gets dropped quite unceremoniously into his ship, drifting through Wild Space with his heart hammering in his throat. The monolith looms before him, red and important and empty inside, and he can almost laugh.

The girl had warned him, hadn’t she? She’d warned him it would be empty, in the Temple gardens in what feels like a different life. She’d warned him, she’d foreseen it, and now it had come to pass. No fool like an old fool, but what could he have done differently? From this side of the monolith, he can’t imagine any other path. This had been willed, this had been foretold, so it couldn’t just be over.

——————

(They have to stay together. Maul doesn’t know why, precisely, but he knows in an instinctual way that if he loses sight of Kenobi or Skywalker they’ll fall in different directions and never be found again. Asajj is limp in his arms, hardly breathing, and there is nothing he can _do_. 

Maul hates helplessness. It is not in the nature of the Sith to be helpless but to force helplessness onto others. It is not in the nature of the Sith, but he has spent much of his life helpless, one way or another. 

“The ground—“ Kenobi begins.

“Do not look down, then!” He knows there’s no round beneath their feet, but he knows too that the Force plays tricks. Visions change where you are, what you feel, and Mortis has been like that from the start. “We must return to the ship.”

“How?!” That’s Skywalker. He sounds near hysterics, Too young and too easily swayed. At his age, Maul had already been a killer a dozen times over and it hadn’t mattered. It doesn’t matter now either. 

“Look at me,” Kenobi suggests, his tone gentle. “Or hold onto me and close your eyes. 

“There is no emotion,” Maul tells them. “There is peace. This is a trick of the Force. Look at nothing, and return to the ship with me.”

“A vision?” Kenobi asks.

“All of it.” Maul sounds more confident than he feels, but he has to insist upon something. “You felt how strange this place is. It—“

“A wellspring,” Kenobi interrupts. “It’s a wellspring of the Force, but on a massive scale. That’s why he brought them here — if this place could be corrupted by death, it would unleash untold power.”

“But… but it didn’t,” says Skywalker. “There’s no power left.”

“Yes, you shut it off by killing the last manifestation.” Maul glances sideways at Kenobi, who catches his eye and nods firmly. 

“Crude, but ultimately effective.”

That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Schemes are one thing, but schemes can be thwarted by a stab to the gut. All the Sith seek eternal power, and one by one they all die — and crudely so. Elegance doesn’t win the day, winning does. Kenobi puts one hand on Skywalker’s shoulder to steer him, grabs Maul’s arm with the other, and steps quite abruptly into darkness. Maul nearly stumbles when he’s pulled, and then— 

The ship. They’re back on the ship, floating in Wild Space with that accursed thing that looks like a Sith holocron floating in front of them. It’s silent and still, as if the power has been switched off, which is a strange comparison for something that ancient. On the other hand, the ancients had starships and empires too, so it may be closer to the truth that it feels. In his arms, Asajj gives a shuddering gasp and presses her face into his neck. 

“It’s empty,” she whispers hoarsely. “I saw it empty.”) 

——————

This can’t be the end because there is so much Qui-Gon doesn’t _know_. He’d had the ultimate truth within his reach for a second, and now… And now he sits alone on a ship with Damask’s holocron in his pocket and there is nowhere left to go. He’d bet it all on Mortis, and had failed. 

Or had he? A thought drifts at the edges of his despair-clouded consciousness. Anakin, Mortis, the truth of the Force. Damask and the Sith, the foretold war. _If only,_ the old man had said, _I’d had a student with a more complete understanding of the Force._

He fishes the holocron from his pocket and holds it up. In shape and color it quite closely resembles that monolith before him, but unlike the monolith now it is lit from within with a deep, crimson glow. It fits in the palm of his hand, and it’s warm. Damask had been _here_ , too, he realizes, and it’s a feeling like sunrise after a long night. Damask had hunted the truth to the edges of the galaxy, and Qui-Gon had followed his footsteps exactly. 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks the holocron. It pulses as if in reply. “What did you see here? What did you learn that I didn’t?” 

That isn’t the right question.

“Where do I go now? Where did you go from here?”

No response. Not the right question either. Perhaps Damask hadn’t gone anywhere, perhaps he’d run home. 

“Did I do it right? I couldn’t change what happened. It had to happen. It was foretold.”

Many things are foretold. The holocron’s glow grows steady. 

“But it did change something, didn’t it? She said we’d come too soon. That changes something.”

Of course it does. A grain of sand can change nothing in a desert, or it can tip a scale or fall into an assassin’s eye or choke a politician. 

“We changed something. But there is a larger picture, isn’t there? Death and rebirth. Death I can see, but what is the next step?”

When he draws his hand away, the holocron remains suspended in the air. It shines now, a welcoming light, and he can’t see Mortis’s gate behind it.

“I need to know. I _want_ to know. This is… I want to be a part of this. Whatever it is you started, I want to see it through until we are reborn, I want to _guide_ it. Even if I cannot change what must happen, I want to change the result.”

The holocron hums and begins to turn, and Qui-Gon nearly has to sit down from surprise. Is this all it wanted, is this all it took? How very simple.

(Not simple at all. The Jedi are not meant to have ambitions, the Jedi are not taught to seek to control events. They are meant to be agents of peace and the will of the Force, contradictory as the two may sometimes be. But corruption is simple, arrogance is simple, and Damask has chosen his target well. What the holocron needs, really, is the desire to usurp the Force and the fundamental belief that one must and should — and this it has now, in Qui-Gon. He has always believed his own way to be best, for better or for worse, and sometimes that is a path out of stagnation but other times it is the path the destruction. 

Of course, he is not the only player on the Dark Side of the Force. There are supposed to be two Lords of the Sith, but there never are. 

Far away, Sidious names a new apprentice and tells him the price of his apprenticeship — Xanatos du Crion had a family, but a Sith does not, so to claim his new name he must bring his master the heads of his wife and son. 

Far away too, Komari Vosa screams fury at visions that plague her, visions of a galaxy gone even more mad than she had. 

Much, much closer, though Qui-Gon can’t see them now, Obi-Wan assures two padawans, one panicked and the other exhausted and ill, that it doesn’t matter, they won, they won and that’s what matters and if Jinn comes back he will be killed. 

Anakin struggles with the memory of how easily the dagger had gone in and how little it had mattered, really, when the Son had collapsed before him — isn’t it supposed to hurt? isn’t it supposed to be frightening, sickening, important somehow? why had it felt no different than breaking a training dummy? 

Asajj breathes the stale air of the ship like it’s her salvation and tastes hate, hate for the thing that had poisoned her and hate for the master who had let it, who had tried to turn her from a warrior to a sacrifice. She will never be a sacrifice, and she will never kneel again, and she will have no master — no one will ever claim power over her again. 

At her side, Maul fumes and thinks of power, of the Living Force and life and death and the Jedi and the Sith. No greater things can be relied upon, no ancient plans or ancient beings or masters who claim a higher purpose. There is only power, and through power one claims victory, and through victory one breaks one’s chains. _The Force is a weapon. I free myself._

Perhaps Damask could well have looked closer to home for his next apprentice.) 

In the dark of Wild Space, the holocron opens. To Qui-Gon, it feels like coming home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And scene! 
> 
> Thanks for sticking around for this monster of a fic! Of course, in true Rot3K fashion, there's at least two more "books" to go, so please keep an eye out for the next one — especially if you want to see more of lil 'Soka, since she'll be the main viewpoint character. Tentatively: 
> 
> Book 2: Clone Wars — Fall of the Republic, ft. Ahsoka  
> Book 3: After The Fall / Three Kingdoms Proper, ft. Maul and Obi-Wan  
> Book 4: Long Divided, Long United / Reunification Wars, ft. the OT crew


End file.
